On March 8, the Missouri House passed HB 1236 by a vote of 144-1. It eliminates the typographical error, first created in 1993, that requires petitions to qualify a new party to list presidential elector candidates on the petition, if the group intends to have a presidential nominee that year.

The major point of the 1993 legislation was to permit parties to circulate their petitions before they chose their nominees. Then, after the petition was submitted, the newly-qualified party would nominate by convention. The error in the 1993 law, contradicting this goal as to presidential electors, should have been fixed long ago. Other bills to fix the problem have passed the legislature in past years, but because the fix was included in omnibus election law bills, sometimes those bills got vetoed because the Governor didn’t like an unrelated part of that same bill.

The only “No” vote was cast by Representative Rory Ellinger (D-University City). Thanks to Ken Bush for this news.