A group in St. Louis, Missouri, has launched a city initiative to convert the city’s elections for its own officers from partisan to non-partisan elections. The initiative proposes an election, followed by a runoff election if no one gets 50% in the election. The election would use approval voting, letting voters vote for as many candidates for any particular office as they wish. The initiative needs signatures equal to 10% of the registered voters, which would be approximately 22,000 signatures. Thanks to Ken Bush for this news.

The New Mexico Senate Rules Committee is holding a Sunday hearing, March 10. It will hear HB 55, the National Popular Vote Plan bill. It will also hear HB 84, the bill for automatic voter registration. Thanks to Rick Lass for this news. This post has been updated; originally the hearing for these bills was on Saturday, March 9.

On March 8, the U.S. House passed HR 1, by a party-line vote of 234-193. However, the U.S. Senate is not expected to vote on the bill. HR 1 is the omnibus federal election law bill. It provides for public financing of candidates for Congress, nonpartisan redistricting of U.S. House districts, automatic voter registration, imposes new campaign finance restrictions, and makes it more difficult for presidential candidates to qualify for primary season matching funds. The provision for automatic voter registration would assist ballot access, because a larger percentage of petition signers would be registered voters.

It is expected that Democrats in the U.S. House will now introduce new bills that incorporate various provisions of HR 1, so that possibly a few provisions of HR 1 will have a chance to become law.