On March 4, the Washington State Senate passed SB 5171, which moves the primary (for office other than President) from late August to early August. The filing deadline moves three weeks earlier, into late April. The bill passed with only one “no” vote.

Washington uses a top-two system. One of the disadvantages of that system is that all avenues to the November ballot are shut off early in the year (except for write-ins). In a traditional system, even if the major parties choose their nominees in the first half of the year, there is usually a method for independent candidates, or new parties, to get on the ballot later. This flexibility is useful if some important and unexpected public event occurs in the middle of the year, to make it possible for voters to support someone entering the race late, in response to that unexpected event.

Earlier this year, Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan) introduced HR 108. All of these points only relate to federal elections. The bill would outlaw vote-counting machines that have no audit trail; it would provide that provisional ballots are not invalid just because they were cast in the wrong precinct; it would require all states to permit election-day registration; and it would require all states to permit early voting, in the period starting 15 days before election day. Thanks to Election Administration Reports for this news. So far, the bill has no co-sponsors.

On February 28, local branches of the NAACP filed lawsuits against twelve Mississippi counties in federal court, seeking a court order to require the counties to move the candidate filing deadline from March 1 to June 1, for this year only, for candidates for county office only. The filing deadline this year for candidates for the state legislature is already June 1, although candidates for statewide office faced a filing deadline of March 1.

The census data from the 2010 census was delivered to Mississippi last month, and the counties will be redrawing their county supervisor district boundaries. The lawsuits argue that it isn’t feasible for candidates to file, before the district boundaries are known. However, it appears at least one of the counties has already redrawn its districts, but is waiting for the U.S. Justice Department to approve those new boundaries. One of the cases, in the northern district, is Winston County NAACP v Winston County Board of Supervisors, 1:11-cv-059. Thanks to Steve Rankin for this news.

If it is feasible for the filing deadlines in 2011 for some office to be on June 1, one wonders why the state legislature didn’t provide that all candidates have a June 1 deadline this year. The primary is in August.