On April 11, the Washington state legislature adjourned for the year, after experiencing severe partisan wrangling over the budget. The normal session of the legislature adjourned on March 8, but the legislature was unable to agree on a budget during the regular session. A special session was called for thirty more days, which ran from March 12 through April 10. But even that didn’t result in a budget. The Governor then called a one-day second special session, which took place on April 11 and did result in a budget.

The regular session was characterized by a rare procedural move in the Senate on March 3, in which the Republican minority, aided by three Democrats, passed the Republican budget proposal off the Senate floor early one Saturday morning. See this story.

Preceding the Senate maneuver, the Republicans in the State Senate had voted to rescind a 2010 decision that had ejected Senator Pam Roach, elected as a Republican, from the Republican caucus. See this story about that from the April 7 New York Times.

Proponents of top-two systems in California and Arizona have long argued that a top-two system will elect moderate state legislators who will cooperate with each other and eschew partisanship. Washington state has been using the top-two system ever since the 2008 election. All Washington state legislators now in office were elected in a top-two system. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link to the March story about the budget maneuver.

A lawsuit challenging Hawaii’s new legislative and U.S. House district boundaries will be settled by a 3-judge U.S. District Court. See this story. When the districts were drawn up, the state used census data but deleted students and members of the U.S. military from the population calculation. The primary is August 11, so this case will move rapidly.

On April 10, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman signed LB 1035, which makes it easier for a party to remain ballot-qualified. Nebraska is the second state to pass such a bill this year; the first such state was Utah.

The old Nebraska law required a party to poll 5% (of the statewide vote) for some office, every two years. The new law says that when a party meets the 5% vote test, it is then ballot-qualified for four years.

This is the second ballot access law to pass in Nebraska this year. The first was the bill that eliminated the ban on out-of-state circulators.