On January 20, the leadership of the House of Representatives said there will be a floor vote on January 26 on whether to abolish the public funding program for presidential candidates. See this story. The House leadership says it will bring bills to the floor every week to abolish some particular type of federal spending, and this is the first one in the series. There is apparently no bill introduced yet to take this action, and no committee hearings are expected. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.

The public funding program has been in place ever since 1976. It provides nondiscriminatory public funding in the primary season to any presidential candidate, seeking the nomination of any party (no matter how small), if that candidate raises at least $5,000 from each of 20 states. It also provides general election funding to the presidential campaigns of parties that polled at least 5% of the vote in the previous presidential election. If any new party, or any independent presidential candidate, polls 5% or more, then that campaign gets general election funding after the election is over. The only general election funding received by candidates and parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties has been after the 1980 election, for John Anderson; and for the Reform Party, after the 1996 election and before the 2000 general election.

Chicago has non-partisan elections, and requires 12,500 signatures for anyone running for citywide office to get on the February 22, 2011 ballot. Only two candidates submitted petitions to run for Treasurer, the incumbent, Stephanie D. Neely, and a challenger, Elida M. Cruz. The petitions for Cruz were challenged successfully, so Cruz is off the ballot. The ballot will carry only one candidate for Treasurer. See this story.

On January 17, a blog post appeared on this web page, describing a bill introduced in the New Hampshire legislature to ease ballot access, HB 153. There is a second ballot access improvement bill pending, HB 152. HB 152 changes the definition of “political party” from a group that polled 4% of the vote in the last election for either Governor or U.S. Senator, to one that polled 2% of the vote for either of those races. New Hampshire elects its Governor every two years.

HB 152 would also say that only parties that meet the 4% vote test would be entitled to a primary election. Parties that polled as much as 2%, but under 4%, would nominate by convention at their own expense. HB 152 is introduced by the same legislators who introduced HB 153. Thanks to Howard Wilson for this news.