Florida Senator Jose Rodriguez and two other Senators have introduced SB 1386. Among other things, it provides that the Secretary of State will prepare a statewide layout for ballots. Currently each county designs its own ballot layout.

In November 2018, Broward County’s ballot put U.S. Senator and U.S. House at the bottom of the left-most column, underneath a large area that contained voting instructions. Then, at the top of the middle column, were the gubernatorial candidates, followed by less important offices. Thousands of Broward County voters didn’t see the U.S. Senate and U.S. House races that were at the bottom of the first column. Their eyes glazed over the first column, so they never noticed they were not voting for the congressional races.

If the bill is signed into law, the Secretary of State’s layout will be used in all counties. Presumably the Secretary of State’s office will pay better attention to good design than Broward County did in 2018.

The Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee has introduced SB 1159. It makes it far more difficult to qualify a statewide initiative.

The bill shrinks the petitioning period from 18 months to six months. It increases the number of signatures from 6% of the registered voters to 10% of the registered voters. It requires signatures (equal to 10%) in each of 32 of the 35 legislative districts; currently signatures are required from 18 of the legislative districts.

It says that petition sheets must not contain signatures of voters from different legislative districts. It says that if the initiative proposes an idea that costs taxpayer dollars, the initiative must include a method for the increased costs to be raised.

The Idaho Constitutional provision on the initiative does not say how many signatures are needed for an initiative, so the legislature is free to raise or lower the number. Almost all other states with the initiative have constitutional provisions setting for the number of signatures.

This bill is being introduced because many state legislators are upset with an initiative that passed in 2018, expanding eligibility to medicaid. It passed with over 60% of the vote. Between 2013 and 2017, no statewide initiatives qualified. The 2018 measure, which needed 56,192 valid signatures, was collected entirely by volunteers. Thanks to Robert Reed for this news. UPDATE: see this news story.

On March 5, former New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he will not run for president in 2020. He had already said that if he ran, it would be to seek the Democratic nomination. See this story.