On March 8, the New Mexico House Judiciary Committee defeated HB 79 on a tie vote of 6-6. It would have allowed independent voters to vote in partisan primaries.

See this story, which has an account of the defeat of this bill, as well as bills to allow fusion and to expand ranked choice voting.

There are other potential good ideas that no legislator in New Mexico seems to think about. New Mexico is the only state in which a ballot-qualified party that nominates by convention is forced to submit a petition for each of its non-presidential nominees. Thus, the number of people who appear on the ballot for the Green and Constitution Parties is very low, because those are ballot-qualified parties that nominate by convention.

Also the independent candidate petition requirement in New Mexico, 2% of the last gubernatorial vote (except for president) is far too high. New Mexico has never had an independent candidate for U.S. Senate or Governor on its ballot.

On March 2, the Kentucky Senate passed SB 228. It changes procedures for U.S. Senate vacancies. Under current laws, as in most states, if a U.S. Senate seat becomes vacant, the Governor appoints a replacement who serves until the next regularly-scheduled congressional election. The bill changes this, so the Governor can only appoint one of three names suggested by the political party that had held the seat before the vacancy occurred. However, that would be followed by a special election that would occur sooner than under current law. Here is the text. If the vacancy was created by the death or resignation of a U.S. Senator who wasn’t a member of a qualified party, then the Governor would be free to appoint anyone.

Press reports say that U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, who was re-elected in 2020, is considering retiring before the 2022 election, and Kentucky has a Democratic Governor, so under current law, if McConnell retired in 2021, the Democratic Governor would probably appoint a Democrat to fill his seat until the 2022 election.

There is another bill, HB 400, which is much simpler, and which says if there is a U.S. Senate vacancy, a special election would be called very quickly. But that bill is not moving along.