Last year the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws agreed to ask state legislators to pass a model law, concerning presidential electors who don’t vote for their own party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees. The model bill has been introduced in at least three states, including Montana. On February 2, the Montana Senate State Administration Committee passed the bill (SB 75) unanimously.

The model bill provides that political parties, and independent presidential candidates, must nominate twice as many candidates for presidential elector as there are seats to be filled. For each available seat, there is a presidential elector candidate, and an alternate presidential elector candidate. In December, when the electoral college votes, any presidential elector who votes for a presidential or vice-presidential candidate not nominated by his or her party is deemed to have resigned, and is automatically replaced by his or her alternate.

The other states in which the bill has been introduced are Indiana (SB 75) and Nebraska (LB 367). Those two bills haven’t moved yet.

On January 26, six Arizona legislators introduced HB 2304, which makes substantial improvements in ballot access, along with many other unrelated election law changes. The bill says that when a party qualifies, it is entitled to be on the ballot for the next two elections. If this part of the bill is signed into law, the Green Party will be on the ballot automatically in 2012, because it successfully petitioned in 2010 and appeared on the ballot in 2010.

The bill also reduces the number of signatures needed for a candidate to get on the primary ballot of a newly-qualified party. Current law makes it difficult for a candidate to get on the primary ballot of a new party; the current requirement is one-tenth of 1% of the total vote cast for that office in the last general election. In 2010, this meant that anyone trying to get on the Green Party’s primary ballot for statewide office needed 2,294 signatures, which is difficult when a party only has approximately 4,500 registered members (however, registered independents could sign this type of petition). Under current law, primary ballot access is not a problem when the party is not a new party. Candidates trying to get on the primary ballot of an old party only need signatures of one-half of 1% of the number of registered members of that party. The bill would apply that formula to new parties as well. If this bill had been in effect in 2010, a candidate would only have needed about 25 signatures to get on the Green Party primary ballot for statewide office.

Finally, the bill makes it legal for an out-of-state resident to circulate any type of petition in Arizona. Current law only lets out-of-state circulators work on an independent presidential candidate’s petition. The bill requires that out-of-state circulators must register with the Secretary of State before working.

New York Assemblymember J. Gary Pretlow (D-Mount Vernon) has re-introduced his bill to define a political party as a group that received at least 100,000 votes for Governor. The current law says a party is a group that polled at least 50,000 votes for Governor. Assemblymember Pretlow introduced the same bill in 2009, and it made no headway.

The bill seems very hostile toward the Green Party, which is the only New York qualified party that polled fewer than 100,000 votes for Governor last year. If the bill passed this year, the Green Party, and all qualified parties, would first need to pass the 100,000 hurdle in November 2014.