On April 9, Jessica Bradshaw was elected to an at-large city council seat in Carbondale, Illinois. Bradshaw is a Green Party member, although the election is non-partisan. Twelve candidates appeared on the ballot and voters were permitted to vote for three candidates to fill the three seats.

Bradshaw, 32, is the daughter of Richard Whitney (Green Party gubernatorial nominee in 2006 and 2010), and Paula Bradshaw (Green Party U.S. House nominee in 2012). Carbondale is a college city in southern Illinois and has a population of 26,000. UPDATE: Illinois Greens probably also won three non-partisan races for Library Board, and won a non-partisan School Board election. Of those four additional wins, three were re-elections, and one was a new office-holder. Thanks to Mike for the news.

On April 8, the Montana Senate passed HB 120, the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bill which contains two ballot access improvements. But because other parts of the bill had been amended in the Senate, the bill must now return to the House. The two ballot access improvements are: (1) moving the independent non-presidential petition deadline from March to May; (2) letting independent presidential and vice-presidential candidates appear on the ballot even if they had been closely associated with a political party during the recent period.

On April 1, the California Assembly Elections Committee introduced AB 1419, which improves the deadline for a newly-qualifying party to qualify. Current law says a newly-qualifying party must finish the work of getting on the ballot by the first week in January of an election year. The bill would set forth a procedure by which a newly-qualifying party that only wanted to participate in the presidential election could qualify by early July. The bill exists because the old deadline, as least as applied to presidential elections, was held unconstitutional last year.