California AB 1038 may receive a vote on the Assembly floor on Thursday, May 16. This is the bill to make it illegal to pay registration drive workers according to how many registrants they obtain for any particular political party. If this bill were enacted, it would be much more difficult for either a newly-qualifying party, or an already-qualified party, to get on the ballot or remain on. The only realistic way for parties to be qualified in California is to have approximately 110,000 registered members.

No group formally supports AB 1038, but when the bill was in the Assembly Elections Committee, every Democrat on the committee voted for it. If you live in California, and especially if your Assemblymember is a Democrat, please e-mail or telephone your Assemblymember and ask for a “No” vote. Governor Jerry Brown vetoed very similar bills in both 2011 and 2012, and some federal courts have struck down laws similar to the provisions in this bill.

Connecticut certified its official November 2012 vote on November 28, 2012. The state cannot correct the official totals after certification, even though in December, an error was found. The town of Rocky Hill initially reported that the Working Families nominee for State Representative, 29th district, received 3,292 votes. But on December 21, the town filed a correction, saying the true figure is 383.

For U.S. House, First District, the town had first reported 3,082 votes for the Working Families Party, but then in December said the correct total is 287. These errors occur because so many voters in Connecticut apparently fill in both bubbles on the ballot for the same candidate, when the candidate is on the ballot twice. In each of these two races, the Working Families Party and the Democratic Party had nominated the same person.

Neither race was close, so the errors didn’t affect the identity of the winner.

The deadline has now passed in the North Carolina legislature for bills to have passed out of the policy committee in the house of origin. Many election law bills failed to meet that deadline. They include HB 185, to alter the order of political parties on the ballot; HB 38, to abolish run-off primaries; SB 39, to make judicial elections partisan; and SB 82 and HB 185, to abolish the straight-ticket device.