The Oklahoma Senate Rules Committee will hear SB 668 on Wednesday, February 13, at 10 a.m. SB 668 is one of the ballot access reform bills pending, but it is by far the weaker of the two. All it does is reduce the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party in midterm years, from 5% of the last presidential vote, to 5% of the last gubernatorial vote. Turnouts in mid-term years are typically 30% lower than in presidential years, so the bill would reduce the 2014 requirement from 66,744 valid signatures to 51,739 valid signatures. Thanks to E. Zachary Knight for this news.

The Southeast Missourian has this story, describing what an independent candidate would be required to do, if any independent chooses to run in the June 2013 special election to fill the vacancy in the U.S. House, 8th district. The newspaper says as far as is known, no independent candidate is planning to qualify, so probably the race will only feature a Republican, a Democrat, and a Libertarian.

The Union-Leader, New Hampshire’s biggest newspaper, has this story about the legislative hearing held on February 11 for HB 521, a bill to appoint a committee to study how to improve New Hampshire election laws. The main part of the story focuses on the testimony of Secretary of State Bill Gardner in opposition to early voting. But the last part of the story covers the testimony of Darryl Perry, who testified in favor of the bill and who urged that if the bill passes, ballot access be included in the study.

New Hampshire is one of only three states that has not had a ballot-qualified party for any type of office, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, during the period since November 1996. It is one of a handful of states that has registration by party, yet which won’t tally the number of registered voters in any unqualified party. It is one of only four states that won’t permit an unqualified party to use a stand-in presidential candidate on its petition (this point excludes states in which there would be no advantage for substitution because the party petition is just as easy as the candidate petition, or because the candidate petition is so late). It is one of only three states that has a party column ballot and won’t necessarily give unqualified parties their own party column. And every attempt by activists in the past fifteen years to ameliorate these problems has been defeated in the legislature.