Policymic has this essay by Daniel Kamerling, advocating approval voting. The article specifically says the contest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination would be improved if presidential primaries used approval voting.

Policymic calls itself “an online news platform to engage millennials in debates about real issues.” The term “millennials” generally means people born after 1982, who were graduating from high school at the dawn of the current century. Thanks to Rosa Barker for the link.

On March 8, the Missouri House passed HB 1236 by a vote of 144-1. It eliminates the typographical error, first created in 1993, that requires petitions to qualify a new party to list presidential elector candidates on the petition, if the group intends to have a presidential nominee that year.

The major point of the 1993 legislation was to permit parties to circulate their petitions before they chose their nominees. Then, after the petition was submitted, the newly-qualified party would nominate by convention. The error in the 1993 law, contradicting this goal as to presidential electors, should have been fixed long ago. Other bills to fix the problem have passed the legislature in past years, but because the fix was included in omnibus election law bills, sometimes those bills got vetoed because the Governor didn’t like an unrelated part of that same bill.

The only “No” vote was cast by Representative Rory Ellinger (D-University City). Thanks to Ken Bush for this news.

Lawrence Lessig here defends Americans Elect for not telling the world who is paying for its petition drives and its costs for setting up the on-line presidential primary. Lessig is the author of “Republic, Lost” and a leading critic of campaign finance practices in the U.S., and a law professor. Here is the wiki page about him. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link.