The New Mexico adjourned on March 21 without having passed HB 383, the National Popular Vote Plan bill. That bill had passed the House on February 20, but it never made any progress in the State Senate.
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On March 21, the New Mexico legislature passed SB 116, to limit contributions to candidates for state office. The limits will be $5,000 from an individual to a candidate for statewide office in the primary season, and another $5,000 in the general election season. The limits for state legislative candidates will be $2,300 in each of the two seasons.
New Mexico is currently one of five states that doesn’t limit how much money an individual may give to a candidate for state office. The other states are Illinois, Oregon, Utah, and Virginia.
Earlier this month, Alaska purged its list of registered voters, to delete people who haven’t voted in the last four years. The new registration totals for each party, compared to the totals just prior to the November 2008 election, show that the two major parties have proportinately gained, whereas the number of voters registered as independents, or as members of minor parties, has declined.
The list below shows the percentage of voters in each party. Listed first is the October 2008 share of the registration; listed second is the March 2009 share:
Independent: 52.92%, 52.62%
Republican: 25.65%, 26.12%
Democratic: 15.51%, 15.69%
Alas. Indpc: 2.78%, 2.72%
Libertarian: 1.39%, 1.26%
Rep Moderate: .77%, .65%
Green: .59%, .54%
Veterans: .39%, .38%
Parties need 9,735 registered members to be ballot-qualified for 2010, unless they polled 3% for U.S. Senate in 2008 (only the Republicans, Democrats, and Alaskan Independence Party polled as much as 3% for U.S. Senate in 2008). The Alaskan Independence Party now has 12,971 registrants, so it meets both the vote test and the registration test. There are 6,031 Libertarians, 3,115 Republican Moderates, 2,592 Greens, and 1,827 Veterans Party members.
The Kentucky legislature adjourned on March 13 without passing any election law bills of interest.
Among bills that failed to pass were: (1) HB 170, the National Popular Vote bill; (2) SB 23, which would have expanded the terms of state representatives from 2 years to 4 years; (3) HB 17, which would have let independent voters vote in party primaries (with no provision for the party to indicate a preference on that matter); (4) SB 124, which would have moved the primary from May to August; (5) HB 217, which would have provided for statewide initiatives.
Even one of the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bills, HB 201, failed to pass. Among other things, it would have provided that members of unqualified parties could vote in nonpartisan elections that coincide with party primaries. Currently, independent voters can vote for nonpartisan matters in party primaries, but strictly speaking, people who are registered members of unqualified parties may not. HB 201 had passed the House but the Senate didn’t vote on it.
On March 17, the New Mexico legislature passed SB 3, which says that candidates for certain offices who are seeking a place on a primary ballot no longer need a petition. The only offices affected are District Judge, District Attorney, State Board of Education, Public Regulation Commission, and Magistrate, all partisan offices. Assuming this bill is signed, candidates seeking a place on a primary ballot for these offices will only need a declaration of candidacy and a modest filing fee.
SB 3 passed because of a decision of the State Supreme Court last year, Sederwall v Herrera. Although the existing New Mexico election law says that primary candidates for these county and district offices need a petition, in practice, they had not been filing petitions, and they had been getting on primary ballots anyway. But an independent candidate for Sheriff of Lincoln County had been barred from the ballot because he had not submitted a general election petition of 3% of the county’s last vote (201 signatures). He had sued and pointed out that his Republican opponent, incumbent Sheriff Rick Virden, had never filed any petition to be on the Republican primary ballot. The Supreme Court had then put both candidates on the ballot. Virden had defeated Sederwall by 73% to 27%.
Now that the legislature has specified that primary candidates for county and some district offices no longer need primary petitions, it may be easier for a qualified minor party to sue over the law that says its convention nominees for those offices must submit petitions.