On March 2, the North Carolina House Election Law and Campaign Finance Reform Committee held an informal hearing on ballot access. The consensus seemed to be that the committee members will write a substitute for HB 32, which will probably require the signatures of either one-fourth of 1%, or one-half of 1%, of the electorate, for new parties and independent candidates to get on the ballot. It is not clear what the base for the signatures will be. If the bill emerges as one-half of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote, that would be 21,345 signatures. The current requirement for 2012 is 85,379 signatures. Thanks to Jordon Greene for this news.

Mississippi elects all its state offices in the odd years before presidential election years. The state elects eight statewide state officers this year. Filing for party primaries closed on March 1. The Democrats are only running candidates for five of the eight statewide offices, but the Reform Party is running candidates for seven.

The Reform Party candidates for statewide office are: Governor Shawn O’Hara, Lieutenant Governor Tracella Hill, Secretary of State John Pannell, Auditor Ashley Norwood, Treasurer Shawn O’Hara, Insurance Commissioner Barbara Washer, Agriculture Commissioner Cathy Toole. The only statewide office with no Reform Party candidate is Attorney General.

Filing for state legislative seats ends on June 1. The filing deadline is later for legislative candidates this year because redistricting has not been carried out. Thanks to Steve Rankin for this news. None of the other parties filed any candidates for statewide office, other than the Republican Party, of course.

Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman has this short article in Foreign Policy, which advocates that Egypt switch to a parliamentary system from a presidential system. Ackerman also seems to imply that Egypt should use proportional representation, although he does not make this explicit. Iraq uses a parliamentary system combined with proportional representation.