On April 25, the California Assembly passed AB 1401, which expands the jury pool to include resident aliens as well as citizens. If the bill becomes law, California will be the first state to include resident aliens on juries. See this story. Although this is not technically about elections or election law, it is included here because the story stimulates thought about of the role of aliens who live permanently in the United States, who pay taxes, who have a stake in how well local and state government functions, but who can’t register to vote (except in a tiny handful of certain local elections in a few jurisdictions).

Oklahoma SB 668 lowers the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party in midterm years, from 5% of the last presidential vote, to 5% of the last gubernatorial vote. Even though it had passed the Senate unanimously, and had passed the House Judiciary Committee unanimously, it failed to be brought up on the House floor by the April 24 deadline.

It could conceivably pass next year. Also, if there is another election law bill in conference committee, theoretically such a bill could be amended to include the contents of SB 668, but this seems very unlikely to happen. It continues to be true that the Oklahoma legislature has not voluntarily eased ballot access for newly-qualifying parties since 1924, when the legislature created a 5,000-signature petition procedure for newly-qualifying parties, simply because the 1924 legislature was aware that there was a lot of interest in putting a Farmer-Labor Party on the ballot. Prior to the 1924 law, there was no procedure for a new party to get on the Oklahoma ballot, except by having it qualify in three other states and poll at least 10% of the vote in those other states. Obviously that would have delayed recognition of the new party in Oklahoma by an entire election cycle.

The old 5,000-signature requirement worked fairly well in Oklahoma for 50 years. The state never had a ballot crowded with too many parties. During the 50 years the requirement was in effect, there was no election with more than two minor parties on the ballot. The old law did have the disadvantage of an early petition deadline, which kept several important parties off the ballot, including the Socialist Party in 1932, the Union Party in 1936, the States Rights Party of 1948. The law also failed to work well for Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party in 1948; an ambiguity in the law kept that party off the ballot. But the history of the law utterly debunks the claims by the Oklahoma Attorney General and the Oklahoma Election Board that the existing requirement for 2014 of 66,744 signatures is needed to keep the ballot from being too crowded. Thanks to E. Zachary Knight for this news.

Two Texas bills that would have minimized the straight-ticket device have failed to advance, and now it is too late for them to pass. HB 1037 would have put the device at the bottom of the ballot instead of the top. The author thinks it is good policy to have all voters at least look at all parts of the ballot, whether they use the device or not. He felt putting it at the bottom of the ballot would motivate people to look at the entire ballot in order to find it.

HB 1857 would have said that the device doesn’t apply to partisan county office elections. Opponents said it would be confusing to voters to have the device apply to some office but not all office. Thanks to Jim Riley for the news about these two bills.