Minnesota Representative Kent Eken (DFL-Twin Valley) has introduced HF 440, to amend the State Constitution to require a majority vote in general elections for congressional and state office. It reads, “The legislature shall provide by law for a mechanism that ensures that in order to be elected to any single member district office, an executive officer, judge, senator, or representative must receive a majority of the votes cast at the general election for the office sought.”

The author’s intent is to include Congressional elections. It appears from the wording that it would not apply to the presidential election. The bill is designed to be compatible with alternative voting systems such as Instant Runoff Voting.

A previous post had noted that a Rhode Island ballot access improvement had been introduced in the State Senate. The same bill has also now been introduced in the House, by Representatives Rodney Driver (D-Richmond) and Christopher Fierro (D-Woonsocket). Since the Senate Bill is sponsored by a Republican and an Indepedent, the bill starts off with tripartisan support. The bills make it legal to circulate the petition for a new party in odd years, and reduce the number of signatures from 5% of the last vote, to 1% of the last vote.

The Utah legislature has passed SB 27 and sent it to the Governor. It is an omnibus election law bill proposed by the State Elections office. It makes two minor improvements in ballot access law: (1) it deletes the requirement that independent presidential candidates must file their declaration of candidacy in person; (2) it sets an independent presidential petition deadline of August 15.

The 1994 session of the legislature had accidentally repealed the deadline for the independent presidential petition. This lead to confusion, because then most people read the election law to mean that the independent presidential petition deadline was in March, when independent candidates for other office are due. Even the Federal Election Commission was confused, and published a chart of independent presidential petition deadlines that said the Utah deadline was in March.

The repeal of the requirement that independent presidential candidates must file in person is partly due to Gloria La Riva, presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation last year. She had complained about the requirement, and the State Elections office took her complaints to heart. No other state had ever had such a requirement.