On February 9, the South Dakota House State Affairs Committee killed a proposal to shrink the legislature. Currently, South Dakota had 35 State Senators and 70 Representatives. The bill would have changed that to 25 Senators and 50 Representatives. See this story.
On February 10, the Montana Senate voted on the proposal to amend the State Constitution and require a majority vote before anyone can be elected. The result was a 25-25 tie. Since the bill is a proposed Constitutional amendment, under Montana legislative rules, it now goes to the House even though it didn’t pass the Senate. However, it must pass in the House with a two-thirds vote, so its chances are dim. See this news story, which quotes former Secretary of State Mike Cooney, who is now a State Senator, criticizing both ordinary run-offs and Instant Runoff Voting.
Although the news story says the bill applies to state and local office, it actually also applies to federal office.
Bills have been introduced in both houses of the Missouri legislature to let local governments use Instant-Runoff voting for their own elections. The bills are SB303 by Senator Jeff Smith (D-St. Louis) and HB 463 by Representative Jake Zimmerman (D-Olivette).
Maryland State Senator Richard Colburn (R-Cambridge) has introduced SB 327. It requires run-off general elections, if no candidate received 50%. The bill also requires run-off primaries when no one got 50% in a primary. The run-offs would be held 3 weeks later.
A bill has been introduced in the Georgia House to make it illegal for people to work on voter registration drives, unless they are registered voters in Georgia. It is HB 225, by five Republican representatives: Ed Rynders, Jeff May, Jay Roberts, Edward Lindsey, and Tom Rice.
Specifically, the bill says, “Voter registration applications shall be distributed only by persons who are registered voters of this state and voter registration drives shall be conducted only by persons who are registered voters of this state.”
The bill, if enacted, would probably be unconstitutional under the U.S. Supreme Court opinion Buckley v American Constitutional Law Foundation. That 1999 decision said states cannot require petition circulators to be registered voters. Presumably the First Amendment principles involving petition circulators also apply to people engaged in asking people if they wish to fill out a voter registration form.
