The California Assembly Elections Committee is expected to hear AB 2351 on May 6. This is the bill to ease the definition of “political party”, from a group with registration of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote (currently 103,004 members) to one-third of 1% of the state registration total (which would be approximately 60,000 members).
On March 12, the Utah Senate Rules Committee passed HB 410. The bill has already passed the House. However, March 13 is the last day of the legislative session, so if it is going to pass the Senate, it will be on March 13.
Over a year ago, the Oklahoma House Rules Committee passed HB 2134, which lowered the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party from 5% of the last vote cast, to exactly 5,000 signatures. The bill made no further headway.
Oklahoma has two-year legislative sessions, though, so the bill isn’t dead. On March 12, Representative Jon Echols (R-Oklahoma City) moved to amend the bill so that it would lower the number of signatures from 5% of the last vote cast, to 2.5% of the last vote cast. This suggests that the bill may move ahead soon. Echols is the Assistant Majority Whip in the House. As noted last month, the new Speaker of the House is the original sponsor of this bill. If the current law required 2.5% of the last vote cast, the 2014 requirement would be 33,372 valid signatures. But even if the bill passes this year, it is already too late for a new party to qualify in 2014. Thanks to E. Zachary Knight for this news.
Santa Clarita, California, will use Cumulative Voting for city council elections starting in 2016. See this story. The city currently elects city council members at-large, but the city had been sued under the California Voting Rights Act because the current system does not seem to permit Hispanics to win seats on the council. Under the new system, there will be no districts, but each voter will have three votes, and will be free to give one vote to three candidates, or three votes to a single candidate, or two votes to one candidate and a single vote to another candidate.
Santa Clarita has a population of 180,000 and is the fourth most populous city in Los Angeles County. It is north of the San Fernando Valley. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
On March 10, a subcommittee of the South Carolina House Judiciary Committee passed HB 4732, which says that state government will pay for the presidential primaries of any party that polled at least 5% for president in the last election. Currently South Carolina is the only state in which the parties pay for administration of the presidential primary (although in 2012, the state shared the expenses with the parties).
Oddly enough, the bill still gives the parties the authority to set the amount of the filing fee, even though the filing fee would be paid to the government, not the parties. In 2012, the Republican Party charged a filing fee of $25,000 for presidential candidates who filed early and $35,000 to those who filed later. The bill also retains the freedom of political parties to set the date of their presidential primaries. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
