On March 27, the West Virginia House Judiciary Committee passed HB 2981, the bill that cuts the number of signatures for minor party and independent candidates from 2% of the last vote cast, to 1%. The bill also moves the non-presidential petition deadline from May to August.
On March 19, the Federal Elections Committee extended the disclosure exemption for the Socialist Workers Party and its candidates for four more years. The vote was 5-1. The party has had a similar exemption ever since it won a lawsuit on this issue in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982. See this article from the April 6 Militant for more details.
A bill to ease Illinois ballot access, HB 2620, is pending. Although it has not advanced yet, on March 25 it was amended to include an unrelated provision relating to the organization of qualified political parties. The author of HB 2620 is Representative William Black, a Republican. The amendment was authored by Representative Lou Lang, a Democrat. It seems likely that Representative Lang would not have bothered to place her amendment into HB 2620, unless there is some reason to believe that it will eventually pass.
The bill to improve Maine procedures for write-in candidates, LD 547, has not advanced, and it is now too late for it to pass. The bill would have required that the names of declared write-in candidates be posted at polling places, and also would have deleted the requirement that the voter write in not only the name of the write-in candidate, but the candidate’s town or city.
On March 26, the Oklahoma House Rules Committee passed SB 852, which makes it somewhat easier for an initiative to get on the ballot.
