California Assemblymember Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) has introduced AB 1038. It says, “A person shall not offer to pay or pay money or other valuable consideration to another person, either directly or indirectly, to assist another person to register to vote under a certain political party by receiving the completed affidavit of registration. Any person who violates this section is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

Assemblymember Pan had a similar bill in 2012, AB 2058, but Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it.

The bill is discriminatory, because while it would make it illegal for a qualified party to pay someone for each registration into that party, it would not be illegal for an unqualified party to do the same thing. California election law defines “party” to mean a qualified party. The bill has a hearing in the Assembly Elections Committee on Tuesday, April 9, at 1:30 p.m.

On March 28, the Hawaii Senate Ways & Means Committee passed HB 1481, which would institute a program of public funding for candidates for state house of representatives. Here is a copy of the bill, although it may not be the latest version. The bill had passed the House on March 5. It does not discriminate for or against any candidate on the basis of partisan affiliation.

On April 3, the Montana Senate State Administration Committee passed HB 120, which makes two ballot access improvements. It permits independent presidential and vice-presidential candidates to be on the November ballot, even if they had some association with a qualified political party in the preceding period; (2) it moves the non-presidential independent petition deadline from March to May.

In 2012, two states had petition deadlines for either newly-qualifying parties or independent candidates declared unconstitutional. Those two states were California and Montana. Whereas the Montana legislature is correcting the invalid law, there is no bill in the California legislature to repair the unconstitutional filing deadline in California.