Free & Equal released this press release on May 15, asking people who care about ballot access to contact certain key Oklahoma legislators today and in the next few days, urging support for HB 1072. HB 1072 lowers the number of signatures to put a previously unqualified party on the Oklahoma ballot. Please, if you care about this issue, make some phone calls yourself, even if you don’t live in Oklahoma. The conference committee does not meet formally, but handles its business by the process of individual members talking to other individual members of the Committee. The conference committee has 223 bills to consider by May 21.

On May 14, the California Assembly unanimously passed AB 308. It provides that overseas voters who are voting in an election that requires a run-off if no one gets 50% of the vote in the first round, will be sent two ballots in the same envelope. The envelope would include a normal ballot, and a separate ballot for the same election using Instant Runoff. The overseas voter is then free to mark both ballots. In the event that the election requires a run-off, that voter’s IRV ballot is used, so that there is no need to mail that voter a separate ballot for the run-off.

On May 13, Illinois HB 723 was amended in the Senate Elections Committee, the very day it had been assigned to that committee. This indicates the legislative leadership is interested in passing it quickly. It restricts the ability of ballot-qualified parties to nominate someone after the primary is over. Existing law lets the party do this with no additional petition, but the bill requires that candidates nominated after the primary must submit a petition, to be circulated between mid-February and mid-April. The amendment reduces that petition from 5% of the last vote cast, to approximately one-half of 1% of the last vote cast.