Australia held an election on Saturday, May 18. The House results are mostly known. See the wikipedia article here.
Results for the Senate, which uses proportional representation, won’t be known for a while. See this article. It appears neither major party will have a majority in the Senate, but in the House, the incumbent ruling coalition won a majority.
The Independent View, Michael Drucker’s blog, has this post with the details of how Democratic presidential candidates qualify for the first debate, which is coming up next month. Since the criteria depend on polls, it is interesting to compare the Democratic debate rules with the rules of the Commission on Presidential Debates for general election debates. The Democratic rules concerning polls are much more specific. They set forth the precise polls that count. The Commission does not name any particular polls.
Missouri House Bill 26 has been dropped from the House calendar, so it is considered dead. It had passed the House on second reading on March 27, but then it was never brought up for third (final) reading. It would have changed Missouri from an open primary state, to a closed primary state. Thanks to Ken Bush for this news.
On May 16, the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee passed HB 2504. It imposes filing fees on candidates nominated by parties that nominate by convention. But it also makes it easier for a party to remain on the ballot.
In Texas, qualified parties, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, always nominate by convention, not by primary. Under current law, no candidates pay filing fees except candidates filing in a primary. The only valid state purpose for the fees is to prevent the primary ballots from being too crowded, so there is no legal rationale for the filing fee part of the bill.
The part of the bill that makes it easier for a party to remain on the ballot would have the effect of putting the Green Party back on the ballot. The Green Party last appeared on the ballot in 2016. The bill says if a party polled 2% for any statewide race at any of the last five elections, it is qualified. So if it becomes law, the Green Party would be back on the ballot. It was on in 2000 and 2002, and also it was on in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016.
Two Libertarians testified against the bill (because of the filing fee provision) and one Green testified in favor of the bill.
On May 16, two California election law bills passed the Assembly Appropriations Committee. They are AB 1451, which outlaws paying initiative circulators on a per-signature basis; and AB 681, which requires election officials to send three messages to independent voters in advance of a presidential primary, telling them which parties allow independents to vote in their presidential primaries. AB 681 was amended to provide that it takes effect as soon as it is signed into law.
