Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz says she will file a lawsuit in state court, seeking a decision that she is eligible to run for Attorney General this year. See this story. She is the plaintiff and the defendants include the office of Secretary of State and the Democratic Party.

Connecticut has a statute that says, “The Attorney General shall be an attorney of law of at least ten years active practice at the bar of this state.” Bysiewicz became a member of the Connecticut bar in 1986, but she stopped practicing law for a living in 1992, when she was elected to the state legislature. She served in the legislature until 1998, and then became Secretary of State.

The ballot-qualified Moderate Party of Rhode Island has announced that it will fill most, if not all, of the statewide state ticket. See this story. Thanks to Nancy Hanks for the link. The Moderate Party is also hoping to get a bill introduced in the 2010 legislature to ease the petition requirement. The party’s bill last year, to lower the number of signatures from 5% of the last gubernatorial vote, to a flat 10,000 signatures, passed the Senate but not the House.

On February 5, Colorado Representative Kathleen Curry introduced HB 1271, which relaxes the prior affiliation rules for all candidates. Current Colorado law says no one may be a petitioning candidate in the November election if that person was a member of a qualified party, for even one day, at any time during the 17 months before the general election. Current law also gives political parties the freedom to set their own prior disaffiliation period. But current law says that for qualified political parties that don’t have their own special bylaw on the subject, no one can be the nominee of a party if that person was a member of any other party one year before filing for a party primary.

HB 1271 eases all those deadlines, and makes them only apply to a candidate’s prior registration going back to January 1 of the election year. That would still give Colorado the second most restrictive law on that subject, for independent candidates, of any state. If the bill passes, only California would have a more severe period. The bill does not take effect until 2012. It has already had a hearing, in the House Judiciary Committee, on February 18. The Committee will vote on Monday, February 22.