On February 15, the Virginia House passed SB 1246, which moves the presidential primary from February to March. Thanks to Josh Putnam of Frontloading HQ for this news. The bill now goes to the Governor.
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Vermont Representative John Moran (D-Wardsboro) and eight others have introduced HB 241. Vermont already allows two parties to jointly nominate the same person, but that candidate’s name is only listed once on the November ballot, followed by the names of all the parties that have nominated that person. The bill would change fusion in Vermont, to the type used in New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and South Carolina. Those states print the name of a candidate on the ballot twice (if the candidate is nominated by two parties), so voters can choose which party label they wish to support.
The bill was the idea of the Working Families Party, which is already ballot-qualified in Vermont.
Montana Representative Michael More (R-Gallatin Gateway) has introduced HB 521, to require all state judges (except Justices of the Peace) to be elected and re-elected in partisan elections. Currently, Montana holds non-partisan judicial elections when an incumbent judge is leaving the bench. Judges whose term has expired, and who wish to remain in office, currently appear on the ballot with a retention question (voters check “yes” or “no” to determine whether to keep the judge in office). See this story. The bill was heard in the House Administration Committee on February 15, and the Committee will decide in a few days whether to pass the bill.
A House sponsor has been found for the Pennsylvania Voter’s Act. He is Representative Eugene DePasquale (D-York). The bill has already been introduced in the Senate as SB 21. In the Senate, the bill’s sponsor is a Republican, Senator Mike Folmer. Having sponsors in both houses, and having one sponsor be a Republican and the other a Democrat, is advantageous for the bill.
The bill would decrease the number of signatures for independent candidates. For minor parties, it would let them nominate by convention, with no petitions needed, if they had approximately 4,500 registered members.
On February 14, the Arizona House unanimously passed HB 2335, which provides that vice-presidential nominees’ names should be printed on November ballots. Arizona and North Dakota have been the only two states that don’t print the names of vice-presidential nominees on the November ballot.
The Arizona bill started out this year as a bill to not only put vice-presidential candidates on the ballot, but to stop listing the candidates for presidential elector on the ballot. Only six states still print the names of presidential elector candidates on the ballot, and Arizona is the largest-population state to list them. Eleven candidates for presidential elector, for each party, and also for each independent candidate for president, takes up a lot of room on the ballot. And voters can’t vote for individual electors in any event. But, the bill was amended before it passed, to keep the names of the presidential electors on the ballot.