Now is the time for anyone who is unhappy with his or her state’s election laws to ask a state legislator, or a legislator-elect, to introduce bills in the 2013 sessions of that state’s legislature.

Deadline vary tremendously, but some states have very early deadlines for legislators to introduce bills. Indiana requires bills in the 2013 session to have been introduced by late 2012.

As far as is known, activists in the following states are already working on getting ballot access bills introduced: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia.

Georgia Libertarians ought to be seeking a change in the law, to enable the party to run candidates for U.S. House, legislature, and county partisan office. The Georgia law, making it virtually impossible for the Libertarian Party to run for these offices, is absurd, when one considers that statewide Libertarian nominees in partisan elections carried counties in both 2008 and 2012, and polled over one-third of the vote in one statewide partisan race last week.

The Georgia Secretary of State’s office says not all counties have forwarded the write-in totals for the declared write-in candidates, so even though the Secretary’s web page purports to have the final results, they really aren’t final yet. Until the write-in results come in, no one can even know the precise number of votes cast in Georgia for President or any other office. The Secretary of State hopes to have the complete results by Thanksgiving.

The lawsuit Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County v Bowen, 11-55316, will be decided by the Ninth Circuit, probably in the next few months. The issue is the California law that requires petition circulators to live in the district of the candidate whose petition they are circulating. The state acknowledges that the law is unconstitutional, but says the plaintiffs don’t have standing. On August 21, 2012, the Ninth Circuit had sent this case to mediation, but mediation has failed, so the case returns to the Ninth Circuit.