On April 19, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey called a special U.S. Senate election for December 12, 2017. The previous Governor, who was in office until earlier this month, had refused to call such an election until November 2018. See this story. Thanks to Mike Drucker for this news.

If any independent candidate, or any unqualified party, wishes to participate in this election, 35,413 valid signatures must be submitted by August 15. It would be possible to argue that the state should reduce the number of signatures, given that less than four months remains to gather these signatures, whereas normally a petition may take as long as the circulating group wishes. However, the state is not at this time voluntarily reducing the number of signatures.

On the evening of April 17, the Ninth Circuit refused to put any more candidates on the Montana ballot, in the May 25 special U.S. House election. The Court order does not contain any explanation of why. The Green Party candidate, Thomas Breck, had gathered over 400 valid signatures on Sunday, April 9, in response to the District Court’s order of April 8 setting 400 as the threshold. But the District Court in effect created a retroactive requirement, because it hadn’t changed the deadline, which was before the court order had come down.

On Saturday, April 15, the Alaska top-two bill, HB 200, passed the House Judiciary Committee 4-3. But it must now go to the State Affairs Committee. The bill’s sponsor, Representative Gabrielle Ledoux, is a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

All the testimony taken on the bill on Friday, April 14, was opposed to the bill.

The Alaska legislature’s regular session ended April 15, but the legislature is now in special session and bills from the regular session can be considered. However, most of the attention in the special session will be on the state budget, not on ordinary bills.