The U.S. House Committee on Administration held a hearing on HR 1826 on July 30. The bill would provide for public funding for candidates for Congress. This AP story mentions what some of the witnesses said, but has no information on how members of the Committee reacted. Nor does the story mention any of the testimony against the bill.

The Center for Competitive Politics has a link to the webcam of the hearing here.

HR 1826 treats all candidates alike, regardless of their party affiliation or independent status.

According to this story, over 100 people rallied in New York city to hear City Councilmember Bill De Blasio call for ballot access reform.

Some of the quotations from the rally suggest that the speakers don’t know the history of ballot access laws. One speaker tied Boss Tweed to restrictive ballot access laws. But when Boss Tweed was in power in New York city, there were no government-printed ballots. Back in the 1870’s and 1880’s, voters were free to make their own ballots, so no one could be kept from running. The first government-printed ballots in New York were created in 1890, but the technicalities that make petitioning so hazardous in that state were not added until the early 20th century.

Probably the voters of Tulsa, Oklahoma, will vote on November 10, 2009, whether to switch the city’s partisan elections to non-partisan elections. See this story. The initiative (to provide for non-partisan elections) needs 3,427 signatures. Over 6,000 signatures were submitted. As far as is known, Tulsa is the only city in Oklahoma that holds partisan elections for its own officers.