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.

In June 2012, the federal government sued Georgia for failing to comply with the federal law that protects overseas absentee voters. The case is United States v State of Georgia, northern district, 1:12cv-2230. The federal law requires election officials to mail overseas absentee ballots at least 45 days before election day. Without this law, which only pertains to federal elections, overseas voters get their ballots so late, the voted ballots arrive back in the United States too late to be counted.

States that use run-off primaries have a difficult time complying with the federal law. Georgia holds its primary in July and its run-off primary only three weeks later, in August. Georgia is also one of only two states that holds a run-off general election if no one gets 50% in November; that run-off is four weeks later, in early December. Naturally, with so many elections being held on such a compressed schedule, Georgia can’t comply with the federal law. But Georgia officials are so eager to retain their existing schedule, they are offering to count overseas ballots if they arrive back in the United States as much as 35 days after the election.

Under the state’s plan, in 2014, the primary will be July 15; the run-off primary will be August 5; the general election will be November 4; and the run-off general election will be December 2. The state says it will count overseas ballots for the run-off primary as long as they arrive back in the United States by September 9. And the state says it will count overseas ballots for the run-off general election if they arrive by December 30. The obvious problem with this plan is that if the run-off primary is quite close, no one may know who won until after the overseas ballots have been returned and counted, and that would be over a month after the run-off primary. It would also mean that in the event of a close general election run-off, the identity of the winner might not be known until January. The next step in the lawsuit will be a decision by Judge Steve C. Jones, an Obama appointee, whether to approve the state’s plan. If he rejects it, the state will either need to change its primary dates, or end primary run-offs. See this story.