On Wednesday, February 22, the Georgia Senate Ethics Committee will hear SB 377, in Room 310 of the Legislative Office Building. The hearing is at 2 p.m. This is the bill to require circulators to sign (under penalty of perjury) that everyone who signed the petition showed the circulator government photo-ID before signing.

There are many barriers to petitioning that have been dreamed up over the last 120 years, but this is a new one. The Senate Ethics Committee is a very large committee. It has 13 Senators, which is almost one-fourth of the Georgia Senate. If you live anywhere near Atlanta, please try to show up and oppose this bill. Thanks to Garland Favorito for this news. The Committee only hears one other bill, a non-controversial bill that has already passed the House unanimously, so the hearing should not last long and should not be boring.

North Carolina requires 85,379 valid signatures for a new party, or a statewide independent, to get on the ballot in 2012. That is the second highest number of any state, after California. Americans Elect earlier submitted 125,032 signatures, and the validation process shows that it has enough valid signatures. Thanks to Kevin Hays for this news.

The Texas Secretary of State recently informed Americans Elect that the period for circulating the petition to get a new party on the ballot runs from March 14 through May 28. Because it is virtually certain that the primary will be on or after May 29, the Secretary of State says any registered voter may sign the petition. If someone who signed the petition then votes in the primary, the signature is valid. The requirement is 49,799 signatures.

This is the first time ever that a party can petition in Texas and get signatures from any registered voter, regardless of whether the voter voted in a primary or not. Texas has only required petitions for party access to the ballot since 1967. Before 1967, Texas let any party on the ballot without a petition, if it held a state convention and county conventions in at least twenty counties. UPDATE: as Jim Riley says in a comment below, if a Texas voter uses the state’s early voting procedures and votes in the May 29 primary during the two weeks before that primary, that particular kind of voter could not sign the party petition after having voted. Therefore, it is probably better if parties can manage to circulate their petitions before early voting starts.

The Texas Secretary of State’s web page still says that independent presidential candidates may not start circulating their petition until April 4, and that the independent presidential petition is due on May 14. However, that is outdated information. It was written and posted when the Secretary of State thought the Texas primary would be on April 3. Here is the Secretary of State’s web page that pertains to presidential candidates, as it is on February 19. Scroll down to the independent presidential section. The Secretary of State, or a court, will be required to set new procedures for independent presidential candidates, because the law says the petition can’t start until after the primary, but it also says that the petition is due the second Tuesday of May, which is May 8. It is obviously absurd to provide that a petition can’t start until after it is due.