Texas legislators began pre-filing bills for the 2013 session on November 12, 2012. State Senator Dan Patrick (R-Houston) pre-filed a bill to exclude partisan judicial races from the straight-ticket device. Bills that are pre-filed do not yet have a bill number, nor is the text available on the state legislature’s web page, as far as is known. The Texas legislature convenes January 8, 2013.
On December 5, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer introduced a bill to require certain states to expand the number of vote-counting machines. The bill doesn’t have a bill number yet, but it would require the Attorney General to obtain data about which states had precincts in which voters had to stand in line for more than an hour, and require those states to solve the problem. The bill would only apply to federal elections. See this press release from Boxer’s office. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the news.
The Montana Green Party has begun circulating the petition to regain party status. Montana was one of only three western states in which Jill Stein didn’t appear on the ballot last month. The petition needs 5,000 signatures. The Montana Green Party was on the ballot 2000-2004.
The Day, one of the biggest newspapers in eastern Connecticut, has this interesting article about the Independent Party and the Working Families Party. The story has one minor factual error. The Independent Party nominated Ralph Nader in 2008, not 2000.
On December 3, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed SB 3338, which says that the special election for U.S. House, 2nd district, will be in April, not March. The bill only relates to this one particular election and does not make a general change for dates of special elections.
The bill had been introduced on February 7, 2012, for the purpose of changing the no-politics-zone for certain sidewalks near polling places. The original bill had passed the Senate on March 29, 2012, and then had sat for months in the House Rules Committee. In November, when legislative leaders decided to change the date of the special election, they removed the original contents from the bill and amended it to include the text they needed, and passed it in a hurry.
