On March 20, the Tennessee Senate State and Local Government Committee sent SB 770 for summer study. This is the bill that lowered the number of signatures from 2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote, to exactly 5,000.
An identical bill in the House, HB 662, was taken off the House Committee calendar on March 21.
On June 5, Montana holds partisan primaries. Technically all qualified parties in Montana nominate by primary, but the state has almost never before printed up any primary ballots for parties other than Republican or Democratic. Generally minor parties don’t have contested primaries, and Montana doesn’t print primary ballots for parties with no contests.
However, this year the Green Party has two candidates running against each other for U.S. Senate, so there will be Green Party primary ballots. See this story.
On March 22, a trial state court in Madison, Wisconsin, ordered Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to schedule special elections for two empty seats in the legislature. See this story. The Governor had wanted to keep the seats vacant until the November 6, 2018 election. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link. UPDATE: the case is Newton v Walker, Dane County, 2018cv-519.
On March 20, the New York village of South Glens Falls held a special election to fill a vacancy on the Village Board. Green Party nominee Christine Elms won the election, which was a partisan election. Although she was the only person whose name was on the ballot, she had two write-in opponents. One of her opponents was a former Mayor of South Glens Falls. Thanks to William Stevenson for this information.
This Politico story reports on an appearance by Ohio Governor John Kasich. He suggests that he has not ruled out running for president in 2020 as an independent. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
