Texas Representative Cindy Burkett (R-Mesquite) has introduced HB 148, which would make it a felony for anyone to deposit more than two voted mail absentee ballots in a postal pick-up box, unless the person was a relative of the voters whose ballots were being deposited, or unless the person was an employee of a nursing facility. See this story about the bill’s hearing in the House Elections Committee on February 25. The purpose of the bill is to fight individuals who make a living collecting voted absentee mail-in ballots and take them to be mailed. Some of these individuals apparently try to influence the absentee voter to vote a certain way, or try to alter the voter’s voted ballot. But the bill’s solution to that problem seems somewhat attenuated.

According to the article, the committee held the bill but may try to work on some amendments.

According to this story, Paul Zukerberg, a candidate for Washington, D.C., city council-at-large in an upcoming special election, will appear on the ballot. His petition was challenged, but the challenge process turned out favorably for him. The hearing officer said he has exactly 3,000 valid signatures, which happens to be the number required.

Pennsylvania is the most populous state that does not have a law that says write-in candidates must file a write-in declaration of candidacy, if they want their write-ins tallied. Instead, all Pennsylvania write-ins are valid, and the law requires that they be tallied. But, even though most counties tally them, the state this year will not make any statewide tallies. By contrast, in November 2008, the state tallied the write-ins for Ron Paul (3,849) and Chuck Baldwin (1,092).

The Pennsylvania Bureau of Elections says anyone is free to come to their office in Harrisburg and look at the county returns and compile statewide returns. The state also says that there are a total of 11,630 presidential write-ins from November 2012. The only presidential candidate who were not on the ballot in Pennsylvania, but who received at least 50,000 votes nationwide, are Virgil Goode and Roseanne Barr, so chances are each of them received a few hundred. But no one will ever know that, unless someone goes to the Harrisburg office and looks.