On February 18, the Utah Senate passed SB 104, concerning local school board elections. The bill provides, among other things, that very large school districts must use partisan elections. The bill affects only four school districts in the state. See this story.
According to this story, it is likely that the Florida legislature will pass a bill setting a mid-March presidential primary. In 2012, the Florida presidential primary was January 31.
New York Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh (D-Manhattan) has introduced AB 3389, to require better designed ballots. Here is information about the bill. It is not easy to read the bill summary or the bill itself and completely understand what it would do, although the bill requires larger font size for the names of candidates.
Here is what the November 2014 New York ballot looked like, in the counties outside New York city. Thanks to Michael Drucker for this news.
The Atlantic Monthly has this article by Noah Gordon, which explains proportional representation and suggests that the United States would benefit from trying it out. Thanks to Green Party Watch for the link.
On February 18, Pennsylvania State Senator Mike Folmer re-introduced his ballot access bill, SB 495. It cuts the number of signatures for independent candidates from 2% of the winning candidate’s vote in the last election to the smaller numbers that are required for major party candidates to get on a primary ballot. Current law requires 2,000 signatures for statewide primary candidates.
The bill says a party is qualified to nominate by convention if it has registration membership of one-twentieth of 1%, but less than 15%. Current law requires all parties to have registration of 15% in order to avoid having to submit hefty petitions for their nominees. If the bill were to be enacted, the Libertarian and Green Parties would be on the November ballot automatically.
The bill is sponsored by five Republicans and five Democrats. The five Republicans are Senators Folmer, Mario Scavello, Lisa Baker, Kim Ward, and Patricia Vance. The five Democrats are Senators Rob Teplitz, John Yudichak, Anthony Williams, John Blake, and Lisa Boscola. The bill has been introduced in previous sessions and never made any headway. However, this year, Senator Folmer is chair of the committee that has jurisdiction over the bill. Also there are two federal ballot access cases pending, both of which are likely to win.
