On June 22, California bill SB 96 was sent to Governor Jerry Brown. It makes recall petitioning more difficult, by letting signers remove their names after the petition has been completed. It takes effect immediately, and would impact a recall drive that is currently proceeding against a California Democratic State Senator.
On June 27, the Maine Senate voted 21-13 to repeal ranked choice votin. That bill is LD 1625. One difficulty for supporters of ranked choice voting is that the Maine Secretary of State, a Democrat, opposes ranked choice voting.
A few hours later, also on June 27, the House voted 78-58 to pass LD 1624, which says that Ranked Choice Voting would survive for primaries, and for general elections for Congress.
On June 27, the New Hampshire Libertarian Party held a press conference with Representative Brandon Phinney, who said he had switched his registration from Republican to Libertarian. He is the third legislator to join the New Hampshire Libertarian Party this year. He is 29 years old, lives in Rochester, and was elected for the first time in 2016. His State Representative district, the Strafford County 24th district, elects only a single legislator (many New Hampshire representatives are elected from multi-member districts).
Congressman Don Beyer (D-Virginia) introduced the Fair Representation Act on June 26. Here is a link to the 67-page bill. It doesn’t have a bill number yet.
On June 21, California State Senator Ricardo Lara amended his SB 568. The original bill moved the primary for all office from June to March, but only in presidential years. The amended bill provides that the primary would be in March in midterm years as well as presidential years. However, it would not take effect until January 1, 2019.
The bill has already passed the Senate, and the Assembly Elections Committee, and is now in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
