Cam Ward, a member of the Alabama House of Representatives, plans to introduce a bill in the 2010 legislature to lower the number of signatures for minor parties and for independent candidates. Ward is a Republican from Alabaster, a suburb south of Birmingham. The bill will lower the petition from 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, to 1.5% of that same base.

Ward introduced the same bill in 2009, except that due to a drafting error, it only lowered the independent candidate requirement, not the minor party petition requirement. The 2010 bill will include both types of petition. The 2009 bill passed the House Constitution and Elections Committee unanimously, but then it never made any further headway. The 2010 session of the legislature convenes next week and adjourns in April.

Ward is not running for re-election to the House in 2010. Instead he is running for the State Senate.

The San Jose Mercury News has this story about Verafirma, a company that has developed technology to let people sign petitions electronically. The company says it already has a customer, who will use it to help put an initiative on the California ballot. The story says the Secretary of State doesn’t know whether the method is legal, but if someone uses it, the legality should be resolved fairly soon.

The Denver Post of January 6 has this editorial, saying the state law that bars anyone from being an independent candidate, if that person had been a registered member of a qualified party 17 months before the election, is unfair and should be changed.

A lawsuit is currently pending against the law, and a bill in the legislature is about to be introduced to amend that restriction.