On February 23, the Missouri House Rules Committee passed HB 1236. This is the bill that fixes a typographical error in the law. The error says that even though the petition to qualify a new party doesn’t need to list any candidates in general, it must list candidates for presidential elector (if that party intends to run a presidential nominee). The Rules Committee passed the bill unanimously so it is likely to pass the House on the consent calender soon.

There have been bills to fix this problem in the past, but in the past, these bills were merged in with other election law bills, and those other bills sometimes had unrelated controversial provisions, which caused them to either fail to get through the entire legislative process, or which caused a gubernatorial veto. So far, this year, the bill to fix the typographical error is being kept as a separate bill, which helps.