The Montana Green Party is circulating the petition for party status, which requires 5,000 signatures. The party hopes to complete the drive in time to participate in any special U.S. House election that may be called if Congressman Ryan Zinke resigns to become Secretary of Interior. He won’t resign until he is confirmed, so the date of the election is unknown.

Jill Stein was on the November 2016 ballot in Montana as the Green Party nominee, but she didn’t receive enough votes to qualify the party. She received 7,970 votes, but the law required her to get 12,797 to turn the party into a qualified party.

On January 27, a 3-judge U.S. District Court ordered the Wisconsin legislature to redraw the state’s legislative district boundaries by November 1, 2017. This was no surprise, because the same court on November 21, 2016 had struck down the boundaries as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The case is Whitford v Gill, w.d., 15-cv-421.

Wisconsin is the third state in which courts have recently ordered re-drawing of either congressional districts or legislative districts. The other two are Alabama and North Carolina. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily (at least) blocked the North Carolina redistricting.

Wisconsin will attempt to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the Whitford order. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.

Washington representative Zack Hudgins (D-Tukwila) has introduced HB 1469, to move the presidential primaries from the fourth Tuesday in May to the second Tuesday in March. The bill retains the aspect of the existing law that allows the date to be moved if the major parties agree to another date.

The bill also provides that the votes should be tallied so that the public and the parties would received two different vote totals for each candidate. There would be a tally for voters who were willing to sign in as party members, and a tally for voters who said they do not intend to join a party. The parties could use either set of election returns to determine who had been elected as a delegate to the national convention.