Last month, as already reported, a U.S. District Court struck down Michigan’s requirement that statewide independent candidates need 30,000 signatures. The court said until the legislature acts, the statewide independent petition requirement will be 12,000.

The state’s decision on whether to appeal this decision to the Sixth Circuit is January 21. However, on January 21, the state instead filed a motion asking the judge to clarify her decision. They feel the decision is unclear as to whether the legislature would have the power to set the new petition requirement higher than 12,000.

By asking for a clarification, the state can delay its decision on whether to appeal the case until after the judge responds.

This Austin, Texas newspaper story in the American-Statesman describes Rocky De La Fuente, and his two sons who are all running for various federal offices this year.

There is some analysis of the U.S. Constitution in the article, but the article does not mention the point that the residency requirement for Congress has the words “when elected”. People are elected on election day, so residency in advance of election day is not relevant. See Article I, sec. 2.

The 2020 session of the Virginia legislature has many election law bills. Below are some of them, but this is far from an exhaustive list.

SB 174 would have provided that each U.S. House district elect its own presidential elector. This is the system now used by Maine and Nebraska. That bill was defeated in the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee on January 14, by a vote of 12-3. The other bills mentioned in this post, below, have not yet had any action.

HB 177 is the National Popular Vote Plan bill.

HB 214 would legalize out-of-state petition circulators, to conform the law to the 2013 decision Libertarian Party of Virginia v Judd.

Two bills would provide for partisan labels for local office. Currently many local elections are partisan, but party labels aren’t on the ballot. These bills are HB 216 and SB 131.

HB 218 would delete the authority of a qualified party to nominate any candidates for statewide state office by convention, and require primaries for those offices instead. The three offices affected by this bill are Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General.

HB 1103 would let any city or county use ranked choice voting for its own officers.

SB 126 would delete the law that lets incumbents dictate to their party whether the party should use a primary or a convention in their particular election. That law was declared unconstitutional in 2019 in Sixth Congressional District Republican Party v Alcorn.