On March 27, the voters of Baden-Wuerttemberg state in southwest Germany cast ballots for state office. The Green Party placed second, with 24.2% of the vote. Because the Social Democratic Party received 23.1%, there is likely to be a coalition between those two parties. Because the Greens received more votes than the Social Democrats, if normal rules are followed, a Green Party member will become premier of the state, which has a greater population than Belgium and Luxembourg combined.

The Christian Democratic Union received 39%, and its allies the Free Democrats received 5.3%. See this story.

The U.S. Supreme Court considered whether or not to hear Green Party of Connecticut v Lenge, 10-795, on March 25. However, when the orders list from the March 25 conference was released on March 28, the Court had neither accepted the case, nor denied it.

On March 23, the Maine Joint Standing Committee on State and Local Government held a hearing on LD 545. This is the bill to ease the number of signatures for a member of a small qualified party to get on that party’s primary ballot. Current Maine law requires 2,000 signatures of party members, for a statewide candidate, regardless of how many registered voters that party has. The bill would amend the law to require the smaller of 2,000 signatures, or 2% of the number of people registered in that party.

The Green Party presented several witnesses who described the extreme difficulty of getting the signatures of 2,000 party members, in a limited time, for a party that has 37,000 registered voters. The committee seemed receptive to the bill and will soon hold a work session to finalize the bill.