On February 4, the Montana House passed HB 180 by a vote of 67-33. It ends the ability of unregistered voters to show up at the polling place on election day and simultaneously register and vote. The bill would require voters to have registered no later than the Friday before the election. Now the bill goes to the Senate.
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.
On November 2, 2010, Florida voters passed a constitutional initiative, requiring that redistricting of U.S. House and state legislative seats be done by the legislature in a manner that outlaws partisan advantage to any party. Outgoing Governor Charlie Crist forwarded the text of the measure to the Voting Rights Section of the U.S. Justice Department, because Florida is covered by section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and can’t change its election laws without approval from the federal government.
However, after incoming Governor Rick Scott took office, he withdrew the filing. On February 3, three several civic organizations and five voters filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, to force Governor Scott to forward the measure to the Justice Department. The case is League of Women Voters, et al v Scott, 4:2011-cv-10006. The case is in the federal court in Key West, because the voter-plaintiffs live there. Thanks to Rick Hasen for news of this lawsuit. Here is the complaint.
On February 3, a Vermont Superior Court Judge held oral arguments in Trudell v Markowitz, 612-8-10-wn-cv. This is the lawsuit filed last year, challenging the constitutionality of the June petition deadline for independent candidates. The 2010 legislature moved that deadline from September to June. The 2010 legislature also moved the primary from September to August. If the legislature had simply moved the petition deadline from September to August, it is not likely anyone would have sued. But setting the independent candidate petition deadline months before the primary is unconstitutional, according to precedents from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina.
The judge denied the state’s attempt to dismiss the case, and said he would make a decision on the constitutionality of the law in the next few months.
Maine Representative Jon Hinck (D-Portland) has introduced LD 153, to shrink the size of each house of the state legislature. The Senate now has 35 members and the proposal would change that to 23, which would give Maine the third-smallest State Senate in the nation (Nevada only has 21 State Senators, and Alaska has only 20). The proposal would lower the number of representatives from 151 to 101.
Maine currently has both an independent State Senator, and an independent Representative. Also, in 2002 and 2004, the Green Party elected a state legislator in Maine. A smaller state legislature would probably make it more difficult for non-major party legislators to be elected. The proposal must receive a two-thirds vote in each house of the legislature to pass. If it did pass the legislature, it would then appear as a proposed Constitutional change on the November 2012 ballot. Bills to shrink the legislature were introduced in 2009, but failed to pass.
