In the November 2016 election, Onondaga County, New York, tallied all write-in votes, even though no law required election officials to prepare this tally. Here is a newspaper story about the tally. Onondaga County contains Syracuse and is one of New York’s most populous counties.
County election officials observed that more write-in votes are being cast in New York, ever since the state eliminated mechanical “lever” voting machines and switched to paper ballots.
On March 7, the Hawaii Senate passed SB 462 unanimously. It deletes the requirement that candidate petitions ask signers to show the last four digits of their Social Security Number. Unfortunately the bill does not delete the same requirement for the petition to create a new party. But if this bill passes, it seems likely the new party petition might also be reformed in the near future.
On March 6, the Idaho House passed HB 197, and on March 13, the Senate State Affairs Committee passed it. It changes procedures for special U.S. House elections. The current law was written in 1899 and has never been used, because Idaho has never had a vacancy in its U.S. House delegation. The existing law seems to require a non-partisan special election.
The bill changes that to a normal partisan election, with a special primary followed by a special general election.
North Carolina Representative Harry Warren, a Republican, has introduced HB 193. It changes the terms of state legislators from two years to four years. It also includes term limits of three terms.
On March 11, the New Mexico Judiciary Committee tabled HB 206. This is the bill that would have required parties with primaries to let independents vote in those primaries. Apparently the bill was written to also allow members of unqualified parties to vote in major party primaries, and that bothered some legislators. See this story.
