The bill in the U.S. House for a popular vote on Puerto Rico’s future status, HR 2499, now has 147 co-sponsors. Nine more co-sponsors were gained in the last 3 days of last week.

The probable confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court will probably highlight the political status of Puerto Rico in the coming months. Although Sotomayor was born in New York city, her parents were born in Puerto Rico, and the family traveled to Puerto Rico every summer while she was growing up. Her undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton was about Puerto Rico’s ambiguous political status, and her law review note at Yale was about the effect of possible Puerto Rican statehood on the island’s mineral and ocean rights.

The recent U.N. hearings on the status of Puerto Rico are also drawing attention to the issue. If Puerto Rico were to become a state, it would have 10 electoral votes.

On June 20, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed HB 1193, which relaxes the deadline for qualified parties to certify the names of their presidential and vice-presidential nominees. This bill probably would never have been passed if Bob Barr had not sued the Secretary of State last year for listing John McCain and Barack Obama, even though their names were not certified by the deadline. The new deadline is simply related to the date the qualified parties hold their national conventions. In theory a qualified party in Texas in the future could hold a presidential convention in October and the state would still be forced to list their nominees on the ballot.

On June 22, the Louisiana Senate passed HB 420 unanimously, after amending it to add new provisions. The original purpose of the bill is to extend the deadline for independent presidential candidates, and political parties, to file their paperwork for presidential elector candidates. The bill also makes these deadlines clearer.

Amendments by the Senate include nonrelated provisions. One such provision specifies that government photo-ID used at the polls for voter eligibility to vote need not include the voter’s address. This change permits the use of a passport (passports don’t include the holder’s address). The bill also says that Deputy Registrars of Voters can work outside their home parish, although the law will continue to require them to be Louisiana residents. And another amendment says that poll watchers (people who watch for election law violations at the polls on election day) must live in Louisiana. The spirit of this latter amendment contradicts international treaties that require nations to permit foreign observers.

A conference committee will take up the bill on June 23.