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On June 23, the Ohio Senate passed HB 194, the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bill. As mentioned earlier, it moves the primary in presidential years from March to May, and it moves the petition deadline for new party petitions from 120 days before the primary to 90 days before the primary. Although this is obviously better than having a deadline of November of the year before the election, it still gives Ohio an unconstitutionally early petition deadline of early February.

The bill is not entirely through the legislature. The Senate amended some unrelated aspects, and so it must go back to the House for concurrence. That will happen on June 27 at the earliest.

Assuming the bill is signed into law in the next two weeks, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted will probably rule that the new law is valid, and that therefore the four minor parties that were on the ballot in 2008 and 2010 (Constitution, Green, Libertarian, and Socialist) are no longer ballot-qualified. This is not certain, however. A new lawsuit is extremely likely; the new lawsuit will argue that the new law is just as unconstitutional as the old law.