According to this story, the Indiana Election Commission will decide on February 24 whether to leave Rick Santorum on the Republican presidential primary ballot. The story also says that Mitt Romney’s campaign co-chair for Indiana is one of the four people who will decide.
On February 15, the New Mexico State Senate passed SB 218 by a vote of 26-12. It says the general election ballot should contain straight-ticket devices, but only for parties with at least two statewide nominees. The New Mexico legislature’s web page does not yet reveal the vote case by each individual Senator. It seems somewhat likely that the bill passed on a party-line vote, or close to it, with Democrats supporting and Republicans opposing. The Senate has 28 Democrats and 14 Republicans. UPDATE: no Democrat voted against the bill, and only one Republican (Sue Beffort of Albuquerque) voted for the bill, so it was virtually a party-line vote.
New Mexico has a Republican Governor. It seems conceivable that if this bill also passes the House, she might veto it. The House has 36 Democrats, 33 Republicans, and one independent, so any veto is likely to be sustained in the House.
New Mexico has been putting a straight-ticket device on general election ballots for decades, but there is no statutory authorization for it, so far anyway.
On February 15, the Utah House passed HB 233 by a vote of 66-4. The bill says when a party meets the vote test, it is then on the ballot for the next two elections. Current law says when a party passes the vote test, it is only one for one more election.
The vote test is 2%. It is fairly easy for a party to meet the test in presidential years, when there are six statewide partisan races on the ballot in most years. But it is tough in mid-term years, when most commonly there is only one statewide race on the ballot, U.S. Senate. Every twelve years there is a midterm year with no statewide race, and in those years all parties automatically remain on.
The four “no” votes were two Democrats: Susan Duckworth and Neal Hendrickson; and two Republicans: Jim Bird and Wayne Harper.
The 3-judge U.S. District Court in San Antonio (the court handling the Texas redistricting case) is in session at the moment this blog post is being written. According to Texas Redistricting Blog, which has reporters in the courtroom, one of the three judges has just said that it is very likely that the primary will be May 29. I am about to leave the house for a few hours so anyone who wants to check news.google to see if this date becomes final should do so.
On February 14, the Alabama Senate Constitution, Campaign Finance, Ethics & Elections Committee passed SB 15 by a vote of 5-0. This bill lowers the number of signatures for a statewide party to 5,000 signatures. For parties that are only trying to get on the ballot in part of the state, the bill lowers that petition requirement from 3% of the last gubernatorial vote within that district, to 1.5%, but with a cap at 5,000. The bill also lowers the petition requirement for independent candidates. Thanks to Josh Cassidy for this news.
