At noon on February 16, the New Mexico legislature adjourned for the year. SB 218, the bill to require a straight-ticket device on general election ballots, did not receive a vote in the House, so it is dead for this year.

States with a straight-ticket device are Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. It is likely that the North Carolina legislature will repeal the straight-ticket device when it meets in regular session in May 2012. The bill to eliminate it, SB 47, passed the State Senate last year.

According to this story, the Indiana Election Commission will decide on February 24 whether to leave Rick Santorum on the Republican presidential primary ballot. The story also says that Mitt Romney’s campaign co-chair for Indiana is one of the four people who will decide.

On February 15, the Utah House passed HB 233 by a vote of 66-4. The bill says when a party meets the vote test, it is then on the ballot for the next two elections. Current law says when a party passes the vote test, it is only one for one more election.

The vote test is 2%. It is fairly easy for a party to meet the test in presidential years, when there are six statewide partisan races on the ballot in most years. But it is tough in mid-term years, when most commonly there is only one statewide race on the ballot, U.S. Senate. Every twelve years there is a midterm year with no statewide race, and in those years all parties automatically remain on.

The four “no” votes were two Democrats: Susan Duckworth and Neal Hendrickson; and two Republicans: Jim Bird and Wayne Harper.