On February 13, the New Hampshire House Election Law Committee defeated all bills that would have eased ballot access. The vote was 20-0 in some cases, and 18-2 in other cases. The committee also defeated bills to use Ranked Choice Voting or Approval Voting.

The ballot access bills were: HB 1479 would have let small qualified parties nominate by convention; HB 1239 would have let voters sign multiple petitions to create new parties; HB 1448 would have made it easier for a party to remain on the ballot; HB 1568 would have allowed a group to become a qualified party by persuading at least 1% of the registered voters to register into that new party. Thanks to Darryl Perry for this news.

The Illinois Green Party’s ballot access case Tripp v Scholz now has a U.S. Supreme Court docket number, 17-1129. If the state wishes to respond to the cert petition, it must due so by March 14. The case concerns ballot access for the legislative candidates of unqualified parties. In 2016, Illinois was one of three states that had no third party candidates for the legislature on the ballot (not counting a handful of states that didn’t have legislative elections in 2016). The other two were North Dakota and South Dakota.

The Opelika-Auburn News, a daily newspaper in Alabama, has this story about the rules for an independent candidate to get on the ballot in that state. Alabama and New Mexico are tied for having the nation’s most restrictive petition requirement for statewide non-presidential independent candidates, 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. No one has done the Alabama statewide petition since 2000.