On February 1, the Kansas House Elections Committee introduced HB 2578. It lowers the party petition from 2% of the last gubernatorial vote, to 1%, and also expands the amount of time permitted to collect the signatures from six months to one year. The Green Party is responsible for getting this bill introduced. In Kansas, many bills are introduced by committees, rather than by a single legislator. The fact that the bill is sponsored by the committee doesn’t necessarily mean the committee favors the bill, but it is a good sign to have the committee sponsor the bill.

Wyoming Representative Chip Neiman (R-Hulett) has introduced HB 74. It moves the primary from August to May, and says if no one gets 50% in the primary, there will be a run-off primary in August. Neiman also introduced a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize this change, which is HJ3.

Wyoming doesn’t have ordinary legislative sessions in even years; it only has a budget session. But non-budget bills can be considered in even years if two-thirds of each house votes to consider the bill. It is not likely that the bill will get that much support. The motivation for the bill is to make it more difficult for Liz Cheney to receive the Republican nomination for another term in the U.S. House, although even if the bill passed, it couldn’t take effect in time for the 2022 election. Thanks to Fairvote for the news about the bill.

On the early evening of February 7, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the decision of a 3-judge U.S. District Court in Merrill v Milligan, 21A375. This is the case over Alabama’s new U.S. House districts. The lower court had said that the Voting Rights Act requires Alabama to draw two U.S. House districts with African-American majorities. The legislature’s plan, enacted late last year, only has one such district. Blacks are 27% of the population of Alabama.

Here is Professor Rick Hasen’s analysis of the decision. His blog post has a link to the various writings of members of the Supreme Court. The vote was 5-4. The three Democratic appointees, plus Chief Justice John Roberts, were in the minority.

It remains true that no petitioning candidate for U.S. House in Alabama could have started to petition until the evening of February 7, because no one could have known what the boundaries would be. If there is any petitioning candidate this year, either independent or minor party, he or she has a strong case that the number of signatures for U.S. House should be substantially reduced this year. Ordinarily these petitions can take approximately 18 months, but this year such petitions must be completed in three months. Therefore, by several precedents in the Eleventh circuit states (Florida, Georgia, and Alabama) the number of signatures should be reduced to approximately one-sixth of the normal. Normally these petitions require approximately 7,000 signatures.