On June 24, the Oregon House passed SB 326 on second reading. This bill eliminates the “primary screenout” passed in 2005. “Primary screenout” means a law that prohibits primary voters from signing an independent candidate’s petition. UPDATE: on June 25, it also passed third reading, 44-17.

The bill also legalizes fusion, the practice of two parties jointly nominating the same candidate. If any candidate in a general election has been nominated by two political parties, his or her name appears on the November ballot once, but with both party labels next to the candidate’s name. The party of membership is listed first. Thanks to Blair Bobier for this news.

According to this interesting analysis by Fairvote, President Obama has visited all nine swing states since he has been president, but has visited only seven other states. In this context, “swing state” means a state carried by President Bush in 2004, but by Obama in 2008.

On June 25, the Arizona House Judiciary Committee passed three election law bills of interest.

SB 1091 is the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bill. It passed unanimously. It moves the independent presidential petition deadline from June to September, and says that out-of-state circulators can work on an independent presidential petition, but not any other kind of petition.

SCR 1025 provides that the voters will say in November 2010 whether they want to abolish public funding of candidates for state office.

SB 1123 forces Tucson to stop using partisan elections, and start using non-partisan elections.

None of these bills has an urgency clause, so they would not go into effect until 90 days after the end of the legislative session. The session will probably end in early July.