A Welcome Change in Tone After Lawsuit

As some of you know, I recently won a long and arduous law suit with the state over a ballot access law which unfairly discriminated against independents by moving the date they were required to submit ballot access petitions up to an unnecessarily early date. This date had been ruled unconstitutional several times before yet it still took four years of battling to get it thrown out.

Technically, the ruling just applied to me. I am permitted to file my petitions after the legal deadline and the law is declared unconstitutional- meaning the legislature should change it. Of course if it is wrong to hold me to that early date, it should be wrong to hold anyone else to it also. Initially the Secretary of State's office was a bit cagey, and frankly snarky, about the issue of how they would handle it if anyone else wanted to file petition signatures on the later, and constitutional, deadline.

It is my thinking that the Secretary has had a talk with the more partisan members of his staff because a follow-up article by Steve Brawner quoted them as saying "the new deadline is May 1st" for everyone. The difference in tone is pronounced. I invite you to read their original response in this link and compare it to the one in the Brawner article linked to above.