This article describes the Connecticut legislative hearing held on February 25 on the National Popular Vote Plan bill.
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According to this story, Paul Zukerberg, a candidate for Washington, D.C., city council-at-large in an upcoming special election, will appear on the ballot. His petition was challenged, but the challenge process turned out favorably for him. The hearing officer said he has exactly 3,000 valid signatures, which happens to be the number required.
On February 20, the South Dakota Senate defeated SB 82, which would have altered how parties nominate candidates for Attorney General, Secretary of State, Auditor, Treasurer, Land Commissioner, and Public Utilities Commission. Current law says party nominees for those positions are chosen in state conventions. The bill would have ended nomination by convention for those offices, and instead provided for primaries.
The vote in the Senate was 11-22. All Democrats who participated in the roll call supported the bill, but Republicans rejected it 4-22. Four Republican Senators who had voted for the bill in Committee voted against it on the Senate floor. The State Chair of the Republican Party had urged the defeat of the bill after it had passed Committee.
Pennsylvania is the most populous state that does not have a law that says write-in candidates must file a write-in declaration of candidacy, if they want their write-ins tallied. Instead, all Pennsylvania write-ins are valid, and the law requires that they be tallied. But, even though most counties tally them, the state this year will not make any statewide tallies. By contrast, in November 2008, the state tallied the write-ins for Ron Paul (3,849) and Chuck Baldwin (1,092).
The Pennsylvania Bureau of Elections says anyone is free to come to their office in Harrisburg and look at the county returns and compile statewide returns. The state also says that there are a total of 11,630 presidential write-ins from November 2012. The only presidential candidate who were not on the ballot in Pennsylvania, but who received at least 50,000 votes nationwide, are Virgil Goode and Roseanne Barr, so chances are each of them received a few hundred. But no one will ever know that, unless someone goes to the Harrisburg office and looks.
On February 25, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Danielczyk v U.S., 12-579. The Fourth Circuit had upheld the federal law that makes it illegal for corporations to make campaign contributions, and the U.S. Supreme Court won’t disturb the Fourth Circuit ruling.