The Nevada Supreme Court will hear State v Nevada Republican Party on June 28. This is the lawsuit over whether the upcoming special U.S. House election will be a partisan election or not. The lower court interpreted state law to mean that it should be a partisan election, in which parties nominate candidates. The fact that the court set a hearing in June probably means that the election will proceed on September 13. The seat is vacant because Congressman Dean Heller was appointed to the U.S. Senate a few weeks ago. The seat is the northern Nevada seat, centered on Reno.

So far, fifteen Republicans, eight Democrats, one member of the Independent American Party, and five independents have announced that they will run. However, because there are no primaries in special U.S. House elections in Nevada (both sides agree on that), if the State Supreme Court upholds the ruling of the lower court, party meetings will choose one nominee, and most of those Republican and Democratic candidates won’t be able to run. The independents will be able to run if they submit 100 valid signatures. If the Supreme Court reverses the lower court, then all those candidates will run on a single ballot and there will be no runoff.

On June 8, the New Hampshire legislature refused to pass SB 193, even though for a while it appeared that the bill would pass. It would have provided that the petition to qualify a new political party contain language telling potential signers that if they signed the petition, and if the petition succeeded in getting enough valid signatures, all the signers would automatically be converted to being registered members of that party.

Similar laws have been held unconstitutional in nine other states. Courts have stressed that voters have a right to support putting a party on the ballot without having to say that they are members, or that they themselves are organizing the new party, or that they should automatically be considered members. When these nine court precedents were pointed out to the bill’s sponsors, certain other legislators proposed that the bill be amended to say that the petition form should carry a checkbox, asking each signer if he or she wants to be treated as a member of that new party, but also making it clear that voters could sign the petition and yet not be forced into becoming a registered member of that party.

However, some influential members of the Election Law Committee then said that they were not interested in making the choice voluntary, and refused to amend the bill, so it died. Thanks to Representative Seth Cohn for this news. Cohn proposed making the bill voluntary instead of mandatory. He intends to introduce a superior bill in 2012, which will ease the petition burden. For 2012, the petition to create a new party requires 13,698 valid signatures. The procedure to create a new party has existed since 1996, and it is so difficult, it has only been used once, in 2000, by the Libertarian Party.

On June 7, the New York State Senate passed S709, which proposes a change to the New York State Constitution. It would create the initiative process in New York, for statewide laws, and also for local government. The vote was 47-15. All of the “no” votes were Democrats.

Now the bill goes to the Assembly. If it passes there, because it is a proposed constitutional change, it must pass both houses of the legislature again in 2013. Then the voters would decide in November 2014 whether to pass the idea.

The statewide initiative is a gateway for virtually any election law reform that has popular support. If New York state had the initiative process, the voters could probably qualify a proposed initiative for redistricting reform, or ballot access reform, or reform of the restrictive laws that don’t permit voters to switch parties before a primary unless they make the switch during the year before the election. It will be interesting to see if Independent Voting, formerly known as the Committee for a Unified Independent Party, and before that the New Alliance Party, will support S709. That group is very well organized in New York city. Virtually all the “no” votes in the Senate were New York city Senators.

The bill would require a statewide initiative to obtain a number of signatures equal to 5% of the last vote for Governor. Currently that number is 232,709. Thanks to Paul Jacob for this news.