Cayuga County, New York, elects 15 members to its County Legislature, on a partisan basis. The 15 districts are not similar to each other in population. Instead, the county has a system in which each member’s vote in the Legislature depends on how many constituents he or she has. The legislator with the most constituents casts 81 votes (called “points”) each time he votes; by comparison, the legislator with the fewest constituents casts 47 points.

Democrats in the Cayuga County legislature are suggesting that this system be ended, and that the districts be redrawn so that each district is approximately equal in population. See this story.

On February 28, the Nebraska legislature advanced LB 399, without opposition. This is the bill that eases the statewide non-presidential independent petition distribution requirement. Current law requires 50 signatures from each of 30 counties. In effect, this requires 30 separate petitions, all of which must succeed. The bill eliminates the county distribution requirement and substitutes a requirement that the petition must have 750 signatures from each of the three U.S. House districts.

The bill has no effect on the total number of signatures required, which is 4,000 signatures.

The legislature’s specific action on February 28 was to “advance the bill to enrollment and review for engrossment”, which in most states is called second reading.

On February 28, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted held a press conference and outlined his ideas for improving election administration in Ohio. However, he said nothing about ballot access for parties, even though the state’s law on that subject was held unconstitutional over four years ago and the legislature has not passed a new law. See the press release. Thanks to Kevin Knedler for the link.