Rhode Island SB 44, the bill to abolish the straight-ticket device, has a hearing on the afternoon of April 2 in the Rhode Island Senate Judiciary Committee. Here is a short news story about the bill.
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The Denver Post has this story about last week’s decision in Independent Institute v Gessler, which invalidated Colorado’s ban on paying petitioners on a per-signature basis. Thanks to Mike Seebeck and Jill Pyeatt for the link.
New York state has a unique law, which gives political party officials the power to determine if a non-member of the party should be permitted to run in that party’s primary. New York State Senator Malcolm Smith, a Democrat, is running for Mayor this year, and he allegedly bribed some individuals to help him get permission to run in the Republican primary. See this story and this story. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the first link, and Christopher Cole for the second link.
A bipartisan group of Maine legislators has introduced LD 1309, to increase the amount of public funding for qualifying candidates for state office. See this story.
The California Independent Voters Network has this article by Edward Bonnette, explaining the difference between open primaries and top-two primaries. CAIVN carries articles of varying viewpoints, but for the most part it is a site run by supporters of top-two primaries. This article is very useful because in the past, many advocates of top-two systems have insisted on referring to top-two systems as “open primaries”. As the article explains, in open primaries, each party has its own nominees and its own primary, so “open primary” is not a good term for top-two systems.