West Virginia has always elected members of its highest state court on a partisan basis. That court is called the State Supreme Court of Appeals. Senators Evan Jenkins (D-Huntington) and Frank Deem (R-Vienna) have introduced SB 136, to change elections for that office to non-partisan elections.

If the bill passes, there may be some reason for the West Virginia legislature to also eliminate the straight-ticket device. Otherwise, based on the experience of certain other states, one can predict that many voters will inadvertently not vote for Supreme Court candidates.

The California State Senate is meeting on Sunday evening, February 15. The budget cannot pass unless one more Senator agrees to vote for it. Senator Abel Maldonado, a Republican from the central coast, says he will vote for the budget if the legislature passes ACA 6. ACA 6, by Senator Charles Calderon, would move elections for state office to June of even-numbered years. All voters would get the same ballot for state office, and that ballot would contain the names of all candidates for state office. Anyone getting 50% of the vote would be elected. If no one got 50%, a run-off would be held in November.

If ACA 6 passes, the voters would then vote on the plan. The plan is virtually identical to Louisiana’s system. Like ACA 6, Louisiana holds closed or semi-closed primaries for Congress, but uses non-partisan elections for state office. The party affiliation of each candidate for state office appears on the ballot, but has no practical meaning.

The Connecticut Government Administration and Election Committee will hold a hearing on HB 6436 on February 18 at 9:30 a.m. It lowers the number of signatures for statewide minor party and independent candidates from 7,500 signatures, to 1,000 signatures. Also it specifies that the Secretary of State’s office will check signatures. Under current law, town clerks check them, using varying standards. The Secretary of State’s office might not have been able to do that work in the past, but nowadays every state is required by federal law to have a centralized list of registered voters.

All of the nationally-organized minor parties that petitioned for president in Connecticut in 2008 (Green, Constitution, Libertarian) failed to get on the ballot. The only statewide petition that succeeded was Ralph Nader’s petition. Thanks to Andy Rule for this news.