Bills are pending in both houses of the Maryland legislature to specify that all registered voters, and not just members of the two major parties, are eligible to serve on government boards. They are SB 645, by Senator William Ferguson (D-Baltimore) and HB 1071, by Delegate Jolene Ivey (D-Cheverly). Here is a news story about these bills, and also the ballot access bill mentioned in the previous blog post. Thanks to Brian Bittner for the link.
The Maryland Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs will hear SB 1032 on March 13 at 1 p.m. This is the bill that lowers the number of registered voters a party must have to retain its place on the ballot, from 1% of the state total, to exactly 10,000. The existing 1% registration test for keeping a party on the ballot has never been used by any party other than the two major parties, and requires approximately 40,000 members. If the bill passes, the Libertarian Party would immediately benefit, and the Greens would like to benefit soon, because there are over 8,400 registered Greens.
The Libertarian and Green Parties are on the ballot now, but only because they submitted a petition during 2011, and when a party successfully petitions, it gets the next two elections, so the 2011 petition covers 2012 and 2014. Thanks to Brian Bittner for this news.
The Colorado House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee will hear HB 1062 on Wednesday, March 12. This is a bill to let local governments use Approval Voting for non-partisan elections. Approval Voting lets voters cast one vote for each candidate they favor, even though only one person is being elected to fill the office. For instance, if Approval Voting existed for President, a voter in 2000 could have voted for both Al Gore and Ralph Nader. Thanks to Frank Atwood for this news.
On March 5, the Utah legislature passed SB 54. It changes the existing system by which parties nominate candidates. Current law does not permit anyone to run for a party nomination unless he or she does well at a pre-primary convention. But under the bill, anyone could petition onto the primary ballot, regardless of what happened at the party convention, although the petitions would be quite difficult. Statewide candidates would need approximately 28,000 signatures.
The bill also requires parties to let independent voters vote in their primaries, and lets any voter sign a petition to place a candidate on a party primary ballot. It also requires parties to let members cast a convention vote even if the member is not physically present at the convention. See this story.
According to this article, Dick Harpootlian, a South Carolina attorney and former state chair of the Democratic Party, predicts that if U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham loses the June Republican primary for re-election, there will be a strong independent candidate for U.S. Senate.
