On February 27, the South Dakota Senate unanimously passed HB 1012. The bill is now on its way to the Governor. No legislator in either house voted against this bill. It says that a party must meet the vote test every four years. Current law says it must pass the vote test every two years. The bill has an urgency clause so assuming it is signed by the Governor, it will go into effect immediately.

For many years the vote test only had to be met every four years, but could only be satisfied by the gubernatorial vote. Last year, when the legislature eased that law to say any statewide office counts, that had the accidental indirect consequence of requiring the vote test to be met every two years. So the new bill restores the old rule that the vote test need be met only every four years.

Maine Representative Louis Luchini introduced LD 1726 in December 2017. It severely restricted petitioning around polling sites. The bill had a hearing in December 2017 but no action has been taken on it since. Given the lack of movement for this bill, it appears unlikely to pass.

Nebraska election law does not permit candidates to run in a partisan primary if they changed party affiliation during the year before the election. On February 27, Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale ruled that the law only applies to people who switch from one qualified party to another qualified party. Someone who switches from being an independent to being a member of a qualified party is not “changing political party affiliation”.

Therefore, State Senator Bob Krist, who only registered as a Democrat this month, is free to run in the Democratic primary this year. Here is the Secretary of State’s ruling. A similar ruling had been made in Nebraska in 1998.