On February 23, the Missouri House Rules Committee passed HB 1236. This is the bill that fixes a typographical error in the law. The error says that even though the petition to qualify a new party doesn’t need to list any candidates in general, it must list candidates for presidential elector (if that party intends to run a presidential nominee). The Rules Committee passed the bill unanimously so it is likely to pass the House on the consent calender soon.

There have been bills to fix this problem in the past, but in the past, these bills were merged in with other election law bills, and those other bills sometimes had unrelated controversial provisions, which caused them to either fail to get through the entire legislative process, or which caused a gubernatorial veto. So far, this year, the bill to fix the typographical error is being kept as a separate bill, which helps.

On February 22, the Georgia Senate Ethics Committee defeated SB 377, which would have required petition circulators to sign under penalty of perjury that everyone who signed the petition showed government-photo ID. The committee vote was not recorded, but it seems the vote was 3-6. The three State Senators who voted for SB 377 are John Albers, William Ligon, and Buddy Carter.

This bill was defeated because five individuals showed up to oppose the bill. They are Garland Favorito of the Constitution Party, former independent candidate Faye Coffield, former independent candidate Ray Boyd, John Fortune, and Yasha Heidari, who was once attorney for the Georgia Ethics Commission. The bill was also defeated because many other individuals phoned Senators on the Committee, or sent e-mail, and asked them to oppose the bill.

One of the main points made by the witnesses was that if the bill’s author thinks petition forgery is a problem, the state should abolish mandatory ballot access petitions and rely on filing fees, as Florida as done. Under current law, petitioning candidates must pay very large filing fees (3% of the annual salary of the office); there is no real need to require any petitions. Thanks to Garland Favorito for this news.

On February 21, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said that Hamilton County Board of Elections will appeal the Hunter lawsuit to the 6th circuit again. This is the case that was filed after the November 2010 election, when an extremely close race for Hamilton County Juvenile Court Judge seemed to turn on whether certain provisional ballots should be counted. See this story. The case has already been to the 6th circuit once. The disputed ballots still haven’t been counted. The case is of great theoretical importance, because it concerns to what extent the Equal Protection portion of the 14th amendment protects voting rights. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.