On April 14, the Hawaii Senate passed HB 1716 after amending it. This is the bill that eases the definition of a qualified party. Because the Senate amended it, it must return to the House to see if the House agrees with the amendment.

As amended, the bill says that if a party has been on the ballot two elections in a row, then it is automatically on the ballot for the next ten years. Current law is similar, but says the party must have qualified three elections in a row, not two.

The Senate vote was unanimous, except that one Senator voted “yes with reservations.” Hawaii is the only state that lets legislators choose to cast a “yes” vote with no reservations, or instead to cast a “yes” vote with reservations.

On April 13, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed SB 322, the National Popular Vote Plan bill. Virginia is the first state to join the compact since Minnesota joined in 2023.

The Governor waited until the very last day. The bill had passed the legislature on February 25.

Ohio State Senator Louis W. Blessing III (R-Cincinnati) has introduced SB 395. Here is the text. It would eliminate party nominees for Ohio congressional elections and elections for state office. Instead, individuals would file for the primary, and the top three vote-getters would be the only names on the general election ballot. At the general election, each of the three candidates would be placed on the ballot three times. Each of the three pairs would be matched against each other. The winner would be the candidate who won at least two of the pairings. If none of the three won at least two of the pairings, the winner would be the candidate whose loss was the narrowest among the three pairings.

Like almost all of the top-two, top-three, or top-four proposals, SB 395 makes it more difficult for a party to obtain or keep qualified status. Currently a party stays on the ballot by polling either 3% for Governor, or 3% for President. The bill would eliminate the gubernatorial option. Therefore, only parties that poll 3% for president would be qualified. The only third parties that have polled 3% for president in the nation during the last hundred years are the American Independent Party in 1968, the Reform Party in 1996, and the Libertarian Party in 2016.

The bill provides that candidates could choose to be listed on the ballot with the name of a qualified party. But candidates who didn’t describe themselves in association with a non-qualified party could not have their preferred party name on the ballot.