On February 1, U.S. District Court Judge John J. Thorp ordered that minor party candidates for U.S. House, 2nd district, should not be required to obtain more than 3,444 valid signatures to be included in the April 2013 special election. The deadline is Monday, February 4, so there is a possibility that either the Green Party nominee, LeAlan Jones, or the independent candidate, Marcus Lewis, or anyone else, might succeed in surmounting this requirement by the deadline. The case is Jones v McGuffage, 12C-9997, northern district.

Without the court order, the requirement would have been 15,682. The basis for the 3,444 figure is that Illinois only requires 5,000 signatures for U.S. House independents and unqualified parties in years after redistricting, and the judge said a special election is such an unplanned event, a special election is analogous to an election held the year after redistricting. And because normally 90 days are permitted for petitioning in Illinois, and in this special election only 62 days are allowed, 62/90ths times 5,000 equals 3,444.

A ballot access improvement bill will be introduced in Alabama on February 5. In the Senate it will be introduced by Senator Cam Ward (R-Alabaster); in the House by Representative Patricia Todd (D-Birmingham). This is the first time such a bill has had sponsors in both houses. In the past, ballot access reform bills have passed in the Senate, but not the House. Thanks to Joshua Cassidy for this news.

See this this story about the legal status of Americans Elect in Maine. Soon, the Maine Secretary of State will be notifying all Americans Elect registrants that their party did not retain its spot on the ballot. These voters will be given a chance to re-register, but those who don’t respond will automatically be converted to independent voters. Americans Elect only had 58 registered members as of November 2012.

In Maine, a qualified party goes off the ballot if a general election is held and fewer than 10,000 registered members of the party vote. Because Americans Elect had so few registrants, it was literally impossible for it to retain its spot on the ballot. In effect, Maine requires a party to have approximately 13,000 to 15,000 registrants to remain on the ballot. If a party did have that many registrants, it is extremely likely that 10,000 of them would turn out to vote in a presidential or a gubernatorial election, so a party can remain ballot-qualified in Maine indefinitely even if it never runs any candidates.

Meanwhile, Eliot Cutler, who was on the board of Americans Elect, has hinted that he will again be an independent candidate for Governor of Maine. See this story about the 2014 gubernatorial election.