On April 2, the California State Senate Elections Committee passed SB 113, which would expand eligibility for the state’s pre-registration roster. Current California law lets 17-year-olds complete a voter registration card, which is filed in the pre-registration roster. When the individual attains age 18, he or she is automatically placed on the regular voter registration roll.

The bill would expand the procedure to include individuals who are least 15 years old. Several other states have pre-registration procedures, but no state allows anyone to be placed on the rolls as early as 15 years. The vote in the Committee was 4-1.

On April 2, Tennessee State Senator Jim Kyle, leader of the Democrats in the Senate, introduced SR 37. It is a resolution to create a committee to study the issue of minor party ballot access. The Resolution, if passed, will create a Committee that includes five Senators (appointed by the Senate Speaker), a representative from the Secretary of State, and a representative chosen by the Speaker from the ranks of the Constitution Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party.

The resolution also says that the committee would meet during 2013, would study the ballot access laws of other states, and would make its report by December 1, 2013. Thanks to Daniel Lewis for this news.

An earlier post today is not completely accurate, but instead of my amending that post (on Pennsylvania presidential write-ins from November 2012) it seems more useful to write a new one. It turns out that the Pennsylvania state Elections Department itself tallied up the write-ins for two particular presidential candidates. The state says Virgil Goode got 383 write-ins and Tom Hoefling got 28.

Pennsylvania is the only large-population state that doesn’t have a procedure for a write-in candidate to file a declaration of candidacy. If Pennsylvania did have such a law, the decision on which write-ins to tally wouldn’t be so arbitrary. It seems arbitrary for the state to have tallied write-ins for Tom Hoefling, and not Rocky Anderson or Roseanne Barr, two candidates who probably received more than 28 write-ins. Thanks to Rhodes Cook for the information on the state tally.