On April 22, the Washington state legislature passed HB 1474. It provides that in all cases, non-partisan state office elections will always appear on the November ballot. Under current law, for state offices that are non-partisan, if anyone gets 50% or more in the August primary, the person is deemed elected.

But under the bill, the state non-partisan offices will always appear on the November ballot, even if someone got 100% of the votes in the August primary. Washington state has write-in space on the November ballot, so even if only one candidate will appear on the November ballot (because only one person filed), in theory the person could be defeated by a write-in candidate in November. Here is the text of the bill, which is very short.

The non-partisan state offices are Superintendent of Public Instruction, and all three levels of state judge (Supreme, Appeals, and Superior). Here is a news story about the bill. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.

The Washington Post has this editorial, suggesting that the District of Columbia choose its officials using Ranked-Choice voting. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.

On April 24, the Montana House passed HB 120, the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bill. It has two ballot access improvements: (1) it moves the independent candidate petition deadline (for office other than President) from March to May; (2) it makes it clear that the law, barring independent candidates from the ballot if they had too close an association with any political party, doesn’t apply to actions taken outside Montana. This has the effect of freeing independent presidential and vice-presidential candidates to get on the ballot, even if they were associated with a party. The old law was used to bar Peter Camejo from being Ralph Nader’s running mate in Montana in 2004, because Camejo had run for Governor of California as a Green in 2003.