The Tennessee bill to lower the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party now exists in both houses of the legislature. The House bill is HB 958. It is the same as SB 1091, and both bills would lower the number of signatures from 2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote (over 44,000) to exactly 1,000. The sponsor of HB 958 is Representative Jason Powell (D-Nashville).
On February 21, the Montana House State Administration Committee tabled HB 436, which would have set up a top-two primary system in that state. Thanks to James Conner for this news. The vote was 16-3. UPDATE: see this story. Thanks to Mike Fellows for that link.
Arizona State Senator Michele Reagan (R-Scottsdale) has introduced SB 1416, to provide that statewide initiatives must collect at least 40% of their valid signatures from voters who live outside Maricopa County (which has Phoenix) and Pima County (which has Tucson).
The bill also provides that newly-qualifying party petitions would need at least 10% of their signatures from outside those two counties. Under court precedents, this bill, if enacted, would be unconstitutional.
During 2013, San Mateo County, California, will redraw its county supervisor districts. All counties in California except San Francisco County have five county supervisors, who comprise the county’s legislative body. See this story. It is very rare for mid-decade redistricting to occur. San Mateo County redrew its supervisorial districts after the 2010 census already. But the county’s system of electing supervisors has since then changed (as a result of a decision of the voters in 2012) from at-large elections with a requirement that one supervisor be a resident of each district, to a system in which each district elects its own supervisor. The change makes the district boundaries more significant. The new districts will be in place for the 2014 election.
Kentucky is one of only five states that elects its governor and most of its other statewide state executive offices in odd years instead of even years. On February 20, the Kentucky Senate State & Local Government Committee passed SB 55, which is a proposed constitutional amendment that would switch Kentucky statewide state offices from the odd year before a presidential election, to the presidential election year.
If the bill passes, then the voters would vote in November 2014 on whether the State Constitution should be changed in this way. The statewide officers elected in 2011 would then remain in office one more year than they had expected. For the transition, they would get 5-year terms instead of 4-year terms.
