New York state has 63 State Senators. On March 6, 26 Democratic State Senators signed a letter expressing support for fusion. This virtually guarantees that any proposed bill to abolish fusion in New York state will not pass. See this story.
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Utah elects a state school board from districts. Those elections are non-partisan. A few years ago the law was changed to say those elections are “partisan”, but that law was not specific. Utah State Senator Ann Millner (R-Ogden), a supporter of partisan school board elections, has introduced SB 236, to reword the existing law in a more coherent fashion.
Meanwhile, the original law switching school board elections to non-partisan elections has been challenged as being unconstitutional. The case is pending in the Utah Supreme Court. The Utah Constitution says no employee of the public school system shall ever be treated differently because of that employee’s partisan affiliation. The challengers argue that provision makes partisan elections for school board unconstitutional. Defenders of partisan elections say the state constitution is referring to employees, not school board elected members.
HR 1, which is pending in the U.S. House, and which has many election law provisions, is sponsored by virtually every Democratic member of the House. But the ACLU opposes the bill because of many changes it makes to campaign finance. See the ACLU letter here. Thanks to the Institute for Free Speech for the link.
The ACLU letter does not mention the part of HR 1 that makes it far more difficult for candidates to qualify for primary season matching funds.
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.
Rhode Island held a special election on March 5, to fill the vacancy in the 68th Representative district. There were four candidates on the ballot, a Democrat, a Libertarian, and two independents. The Libertarian, William Hunt Jr., placed second with 28.4%. The Democratic nominee won the seat with 39.8%. The State Board of Elections still doesn’t have these election returns on its web page, but this story has the votes, if one reads all the way down and looks at the picture of the vote totals on the blackboard. Also see this Ballotpedia page.
When this same seat was up in November 2018, Hunt had polled 35.6%, but that was a two-person race. Thanks to Bob Johnston for this news.