Although state legislatures are barely beginning to work, in at least eight states bills have been introduced for the National Popular Vote Plan. They are Florida (HB 39), Kansas (HB 2002), Minnesota (SF 18), Missouri (HB 267), Pennsylvania (HB 2922), South Carolina (HB 3187), Texas (SB 130), and Virginia (SB 1101).

Of these eight states, the only one with a Democratic majority in each house of the legislature is Virginia. Virginia also has a Democratic Governor. Thanks to John Koza for the list of bills.

HR 51, introduced January 4, 2021, would make most of the District of Columbia a state. As of January 9, it has 204 co-sponsors. The bill has been referred to two different committees. Generally when a bill gets assigned to a committee, that is a sign it is about to move ahead.

The U.S. Supreme Court has now docketed Kopitke v Bell, no. 20-897. This is the case over North Carolina’s independent presidential petition deadline of March 3. The Fourth Circuit upheld it last year, even though in 1983 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ohio’s March 20 independent presidential petition is too early. The Fourth Circuit said that the March deadline is constitutional because the North Carolina primary is in March. But the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts, have never said that the date of a state’s primary has anything to do with its independent presidential petition deadline. Here is the petition.

If it is true that the deadline for independent presidential candidates can be as early as that state’s presidential primary, then it would have been constitutional for New Hampshire in 2008 to have had an independent presidential deadline of January 8, because that was the date of the New Hampshire primary that year.