According to this news story, the Majority Leader of the Florida House says the legislature will not have time to consider the omnibus election law bills, HB 497 and S 956. Those identical bills, 81 pages long, included a ban on paying initiative petitioners per signature.

This year, activists have had good success stopping bills to make ballot access more difficult. So far, bills to restrict circulators have either died, or failed to make much headway so far, in Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, and Virginia. Also, the only states that considered making an independent candidate or minor party petition deadline worse (South Dakota and Texas) did not do so, and an early petition deadline bill in Missouri has not moved.

Tennessee has County Election Commissions in every county, which consist of 5 members. Three members are supposed to be members of the party that has a majority in the State House of Representatives, and two are supposed to be members of parties that have members in the House but which are in the minority. Last November, Republicans gained a majority in the State House for the first time, so the counties are in the process of replacing Democratic election administrators with Republican administrators. Here in an article from the Greeneville Sun of April 26, on how the process worked in Greene County.

Illinois HB 723 passed the House on April 2. It makes it more difficult for qualified parties to nominate candidates. Current Illinois law lets qualified parties choose someone by committee, if no one ran in that party’s primary for that particular office. The bill says committees can only nominate candidates after the primary if that candidate submits a petition signed by 5% of the last vote cast for that office in the general election (or 25,000 signatures, whichever is less).

The bill will be heard in the Senate Elections Committee on April 28 at 1 p.m. in room 400 of the Capitol.