The Indiana Senate will soon vote on SB 328, the bill that eases ballot access. It has already passed committee and may get a Senate vote as early as Monday, January 29. If you live in Indiana, please call 800-382-9467, a capitol phone number. You will be asked which legislator’s office you wish to contact. Ask your State Senator to support SB 328.

Ralph Nader placed third in the presidential elections of 2000, 2004, and 2008. In those three runs, he never appeared on the ballot in just four states: Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. In the last two years three of those states have substantially eased ballot access, but Indiana has not.

SB 328 cuts the number of signatures from 2% of the last Secretary of State vote, to 4,500 signatures (for statewide office). Also, it sets up a party petition procedure, so that a group could petition before it has chosen its nominees. Passage of this bill would be of great help to voter rights in Indiana and nationwide.

Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin has endorsed the idea that Massachusetts should permit unregistered individuals to register on election day. See this story. There are multiple bills pending in the state legislature to enact this idea.

The Freedom Socialist Party almost never tries to place candidates for partisan office on the ballot in any state. But it will work to put its nominee for U.S. Senate in Washington state, Steve Hoffman, on the 2018 primary ballot. Hoffman is free to get on the ballot without any petition if he pays a $1,740 filing fee, but instead the party will try to use the petition in lieu of the filing fee.

Because Washington is a top-two state, it is virtually certain that Hoffman will not appear on the November ballot, because the incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator, Maria Cantwell, and some Republican, will place first and second in the August primary.