Oregon Representative John Lively (D-Springfield) has introduced HB 3166. It would set up a top-five primary, and abolish the ability of parties to have nominees. However, there is no provision for Ranked Choice Voting in the bill.

Thus, a primary might conceivably have four Democrats and one Republican placing in the top five. Then the general election would be obviously unfair to the Democratic Party, because the Democratic vote would be split up and the sole Republican would be extremely likely to win, even in a heavily Democratic district.

New Mexico State Senators Katy Duhigg and Heather Berghmons have introduced an omnibus election law bill, SB 218. One of the provisions allows petition signatures to be collected electronically. However that provision only applies to petitions to recognize a new party; it doesn’t pertain to candidate petitions.

Nebraska State Senator Rita Sanders (R-Bellevue) has introduced LB 521. It moves the non-presidential independent candidate petition deadline from September 1 to August 1. Existing law already has the presidential independent petition deadline on August 1. It has long been an oddity that non-presidential independents had a later deadline that presidential independents.