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.
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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.
Alaska Representatives Max Gruenberg (D-Anchorage) and Scott Kawasaki (D-Fairbanks) have introduced HB 17, to establish a top-two system. Because parties would no longer have nominees (except for president) the bill deletes the vote test for a party to become or remain ballot-qualified, but retains the alternative registration test. Thanks to J. R. Myers for this news.
As mentioned last month, Arizona Representative Phil Lovas (R-Peoria) has introduced HB 2015, to move Arizona’s February presidential primary to the day the major parties hold presidential caucuses in Iowa. The bill also says that should some other state move its presidential primary to a date earlier than the Iowa caucus, then the Arizona presidential primary would also go ahead of the Iowa caucus, and would match that other state’s date. This news story appears to say the bill will be heard in committee next week.
In 2012, the Iowa major party caucuses were on January 3.
Arizona Representative Doug Coleman (R-Apache Junction) has introduced HB 2015. It would remove the names of presidential elector candidates from the November ballot. Only five states still print the names of presidential elector candidates on ballots, and Arizona is the most populous of those. Printing the names of eleven candidates for presidential elector for each presidential candidate takes up quite a bit of room on ballots, so if this bill passed, the ballot would be smaller and neater.