On April 19, the Montana legislature passed SB 408, which provides that the November 2014 ballot will ask voters if they wish to pass a top-two primary system. The vote was 29-20. Because this is just a measure to put a question on the ballot, it does not need to go to the Governor.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bill, HB 120, which was introduced months before SB 408, still hasn’t passed the legislature. It has passed each house, but the versions were different, and a conference committee will work on producing a single version of the bill.

On April 19, election officials in San Mateo County, California, discovered 65 ballots from November 2012 that had been cast, but never counted. See this story. Thanks to AroundtheCapitol for the link.

The Clarion Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi, has this story about the National Popular Vote Plan movement. One of the most interesting details in this story is an account of what happened in Mississippi in 1944. According to the story, the state Democratic Party convention “secretly” chose presidential elector candidates who were not intending to vote for Franklin Roosevelt, but Senator Harry Byrd. But the “secret” got out, and the Governor called the legislature into special session, and the legislators (all of whom were Democrats) named a different slate of elector candidates for the Democratic Party only a week before the election. The ballots were re-printed to replace the first slate with the newer slate.