Every member of the Montgomery County, Maryland legislative delegation is sponsoring HB 624. This is a bill to let Montgomery County use ranked choice voting for its own officers. The bill has a hearing in the House Ways & Means Committee on February 19. The bill’s chances are very good, given that the entire county delegation supports it. Thanks to Michael Drucker for this news.
The Iowa Democratic Party has drawn up a plan that converts its presidential caucus to something that is more like a presidential primary. Votes could be tallied even if the individual party member is unable to physically attend. Thanks to Political Wire for the link.
Oklahoma Representative Sean Roberts (R-Hominy) has a bill pending that moves the deadline for candidates to file in a primary from April to January. He has recently amended his bill, HB 2338, to provide that candidates may file in the primary of a new party according to the original April deadline. This amendment was logically necessary, because the petition deadline for new parties to qualify is in March. Without the amendment, new parties that qualified near their petition deadline could not have had anyone running in their primaries.
The bill still forces independent candidates to file a declaration of candidacy in January, however, which is almost certainly unconstitutional. Thanks to E. Zachary Knight for the news about the amendment.
Arkansas SB 163 will receive a vote on the House floor on Wednesday, February 13. This is the bill that increases the petition requirement for newly-qualifying parties from 10,000 signatures to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, which would be approximately 27,000 signatures.
On February 8, U.S. District Court Judge J. Michele Childs, an Obama appointee, dismissed the lawsuit Heindel v Andino, 3:18cv-1887. The case challenged South Carolina’s use of iVotronic vote-counting machines. The plaintiffs argued that the system is unreliable and would permit the vote tally to be hacked. But Judge Childs said that the plaintiffs lack standing, because they just have a generalized grievance and they did not show that they have been injured in particular. Here is the opinion.
