On April 2, Tennessee State Senator Jim Kyle, leader of the Democrats in the Senate, introduced SR 37. It is a resolution to create a committee to study the issue of minor party ballot access. The Resolution, if passed, will create a Committee that includes five Senators (appointed by the Senate Speaker), a representative from the Secretary of State, and a representative chosen by the Speaker from the ranks of the Constitution Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party.

The resolution also says that the committee would meet during 2013, would study the ballot access laws of other states, and would make its report by December 1, 2013. Thanks to Daniel Lewis for this news.

An earlier post today is not completely accurate, but instead of my amending that post (on Pennsylvania presidential write-ins from November 2012) it seems more useful to write a new one. It turns out that the Pennsylvania state Elections Department itself tallied up the write-ins for two particular presidential candidates. The state says Virgil Goode got 383 write-ins and Tom Hoefling got 28.

Pennsylvania is the only large-population state that doesn’t have a procedure for a write-in candidate to file a declaration of candidacy. If Pennsylvania did have such a law, the decision on which write-ins to tally wouldn’t be so arbitrary. It seems arbitrary for the state to have tallied write-ins for Tom Hoefling, and not Rocky Anderson or Roseanne Barr, two candidates who probably received more than 28 write-ins. Thanks to Rhodes Cook for the information on the state tally.

The Denver Post has this story about last week’s decision in Independent Institute v Gessler, which invalidated Colorado’s ban on paying petitioners on a per-signature basis. Thanks to Mike Seebeck and Jill Pyeatt for the link.