On July 13, Washington, D.C. City Councilmember Mary Cheh eliminated a provision from her Omnibus Election Reform Act, bill number 18-345. She eliminated adding candidate filing fees to the election law.
The hearing on the bill, also on July 13, will include witnesses who will ask that the bill also be amended to ease the petitioning requirements for minor party and independent candidates for president.
Is this reported anywhere? (Esp. as to other actions taken on the bill?)
In other actions, the sponsor also dropped the part of the bill that slightly increased petitioning requirements for Neighborhood Advisory Council. And she dropped the part of her bill that says those are on the primary ballot instead of the general election ballot.
Of note: Craig Engle, Legal Counsel, DC Republican Committee argued that it was tradition to have at least one minor party (party not in power) representative on the Board of Elections and Ethics. Later, Rokey Suleman, Executive Director, D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics argued that in other jurisdictions around the country this would go to the party that got the second most amount of votes. I approached Chairwoman Cheh after the hearing and made the point that if this would go to the party with the second most number of votes than that would be the D.C. Statehood Green Party not the Republican Party. She said that she understood that.