On March 29, the Maine legislature passed LD 859, which lets towns use ranked choice voting for their own elections. The vote in the Senate was 18-13. In the House, it was 69-63. Thanks to Fairvote for this news.
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On March 30, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris approved the settlement in Green Party of Montana v Jacobson, 6:18cv-87, that puts the party on the ballot for 2022. There are no partisan statewide offices up in Montana this year, and filing for the Green Party June primary has already closed. But before the filing deadline, two candidates filed to run for the State House, so presumably they will be on the ballot this year.
It isn’t clear if the party will also be on the ballot in 2024. The law says if a party polls 5% of the winning gubernatorial candidate’s vote for any statewide office, at either of the last two elections, it is a qualified party. But there are no statewide offices on the ballot in 2022, so there is no method for the Green Party to meet the vote test in 2022. In some states, when there is no statewide office up, all parties automatically have their qualified status extended. The issue has never arisen in Montana.
Max Longley has this intriguing account of the beginning of government-printed ballots in New York state in the 1890’s decade. The first such bill was vetoed by the Governor, because he was a partisan Democrat and he thought the new idea would make it too easy for voters to form new parties! It turned out to be the opposite. The title is “The Australian Ballot versus voting rights – why didn’t they warn us?”
According to this story, the bill to revive the statewide initiative in Mississippi is in trouble. The bill passed both houses of the legislature, but the version in each house was different. The story says the conference committee was unable to agree on a single version of the bill. However, the story also says there is a small chance that the bill can still be saved.
On March 28, the Hawaii legislature passed HB 1471, which slightly eases the procedure for a new party to get on the ballot. Existing law says the petition to recognize a party should ask the signer to show his or her entire date of birth. The bill changes that column on the petition, so only the month and day would be needed.