On November 8, 2016, Puerto Rico voters elected Ricardo Rossello as Governor, and elected Jennifer Gonzalez-Colon as Resident Commissioner. “Resident Commissioner” is the Puerto Rico term for the delegate sent to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Both are nominees of the New Progressive Party, which favors statehood. Governor Rossello plans to work for legislation that would enable Puerto Rico voters to hold elections for two U.S. Senate seats and five U.S. House seats. That would probably involve a districting plan to create five U.S. House districts. Puerto Rico’s population would entitle it to five seats if it were a state.

Commissioner Gonzalez-Colon, the first woman to represent Puerto Rico in the U.S. House, has already introduced HR 260, to begin the process for statehood. The text of the measure is still not on the web page for Congress. The bill was introduced January 4, 2017.

According to this story, Virginia State Senators Richard Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) and John Cosgrove (R-Chesapeake) plan to introduce bills this year to let parties close their primaries. The Obenshain proposal would also change the voter registration form, so that the form would ask applicants to choose a party, or independent status. The bills don’t appear to have been introduced yet. Thanks to Mike Drucker for the link.

Assuming U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions resigns his Senate seat to become Attorney General, there will be no special election to replace him during 2017. Alabama law permits a Governor to call a special election in an odd year to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate, but it does not require the Governor to do that.

On January 5, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley said he won’t call a special election in 2017. Instead there will be a special election in November 2018, for the remaining two years of that term. This is disappointing, because last year a U.S. District Court had ruled that when Alabama holds a special congressional election, for that special election the normal 3% petition requirement must be eased. See this news story about the Governor’s decision. He isn’t holding a special election in 2017 in order to save money.