According to this story, a draft of a Connecticut omnibus election law bill would not only make it illegal for a party to use the word “Independent” in its name; it would also ban these words from being part of a political party’s name: “United States”; “America”; “Connecticut”; the name of any city or town; or any words relating to a symbol for the government or a deity or religion. Scroll down to the last portion of the article.

In 1990, former U.S. Senator Lowell Weicker formed “A Connecticut Party” and was elected Governor under that party name. Since then, the Connecticut legislature has passed discriminatory public funding for state office that, if it had existed in 1990, would have made it impossible for Weicker to have won the 1990 election (according to Weicker himself, in his sworn testimony in a lawsuit over that law). On top of that, some legislators seem to want to retroactively fight what happened in 1990 by also depriving Weicker of his chosen party label.

On June 2, at 2:15 a.m., the Kansas legislature adjourned for the year without having passed any election law bills. The Secretary of State had asked the legislature to repeal the law making it illegal for out-of-state residents to circulate petitions in Kansas, because that law had been held unconstitutional. That bill, HB 2130, had passed the House in February by a vote of 118-1, but the Senate never took it up.

Other bills that failed to pass include SB 64 and HB 2210, which would have imposed stricter limits on when voters may switch political party affiliation.