On February 18, Don Shaffer died. He had been a founder of the New Party in 1992, and also a founder of the Working Families Party in 1997. See this article in The Nation, written by Dan Cantor.
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On February 18, the Kansas House passed HB 2130, which repeals the Kansas ban on out-of-state petitioners. The vote was 118-1. This bill exists because the Constitution Party won a ballot access lawsuit in 2011 against the out-of-state circulator ban.
On February 15, the Hawaii Senate Judiciary and Government Operations Committee passed SB 223 unanimously. As amended, the bill makes it much easier for a political party to exclude candidates from running in that party’s primary. Current law says that if a party believes a candidate in that party’s primary is not a bona fide member of the party, the party can go to court to try to prevent the candidate from appearing on the party’s primary ballot. The bill changes the procedure so that the state chair of a party can prevent any candidate from running in that party’s primary. No lawsuit would be needed.
The original contents of SB 223, to legalize write-ins, have unfortunately been taken out of the bill.
The bill says that an excluded candidate would be permitted to run as an independent candidate, without having to do a completely new petition.
On February 19, the Montana House State Administration Committee heard HB 436, which would establish a top-two system for all partisan office except President. No one testified for it except a state legislator. Four Libertarians testified against the bill, as did the Secretary of State.
In Montana, committees do not vote on bills at the hearing; there will probably be a committee vote within a week. Thanks to Mike Fellows for this news. UPDATE: here is a short news story about the hearing. FURTHER UPDATE: here is a much more detailed news article about the hearing.
On February 19, the Virginia House passed SB 690, which cuts the number of signatures for all presidential petitions (both presidential primary, and general election petitions) from 10,000 signatures to 5,000 signatures. The bill had already passed the Senate, so now it goes to the Governor. The vote was unanimous. Thanks to Kevin Hayes for this news. This news will help to bolster the North Carolina ballot access improvement bill, which will be introduced in a week.