This article says New York state is behind schedule in choosing new vote-counting equipment to replace its mechanical voting machines. New York state is the only state that still uses these machines. The state is in violation of federal law. The machines have only nine columns (or nine rows, depending on which style is in use). Because New York state uses the party-column (or party-row) ballot format, this forces the state to put two parties in the same column (or row). In November 2008, the state squeezed Ralph Nader’s Populist Party, and the Libertarian Party, into the same column, making it relatively difficult for voters to find either one.

Alabama Representative Cam Ward (R-Alabaster) has agreed to introduce a bill to lower the number of signatures needed for minor parties and non-presidential independent candidates. He has been in the legislature since 2003. Thanks to Steven Gordon for this news.

Even though the Nebraska Director of Elections tried to find a sponsor in the legislature for a bill to make it easier for a party to remain on the ballot, no such bill has been introduced, and the deadline for new bills has passed.

This newspaper article explains that the Nebraska legislature has an unusually small number of bills this year. The explanation is that the many new legislators are reluctant to introduce bills. There are many new legislators in Nebraska this year, because legislative term limits finally took effect.

The bill that had been proposed to assist minor parties would have said that when a party meets the 5% vote test, it remains on the ballot for the next two elections, instead of just one election.