On January 12, the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Green Party again asked the State Elections Department why it has not tallied any write-in votes for Cynthia McKinney for president. The party had submitted a list of presidential elector candidates pledged to Cynthia McKinney before the election, and asked for a tally of the number of votes received by McKinney. In response, as noted earlier, the Department arbitrarily tallied the write-ins for Ron Paul, Hillary Clinton, and Chuck Baldwin, but no one else. As noted previously, all write-ins in Pennsylvania are valid, because the state has no requirement that a write-in candidate file a declaration of candidacy in order to obtain a tally.

On January 6, bills were introduced in both Houses of Congress to give the District of Columbia a voting member of the U.S. House. They are HR 157 in the House, and S160 in the Senate.

The bills would also permanently expand the size of the U.S. House from 435 member to 437 members, effective upon passage. The other new seat would go to Utah, which just barely missed getting another seat in the last reapportionment in 2001.

The sponsors in the U.S. Senate are Orrin Hatch and Joe Lieberman. The sponsor in the House is D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Texas Representative Robert Alonzo (D-Dallas) has introduced HB 246. It would move primary elections from early March to early February, in all election years. Because the date of the Texas primary is tied to the deadline for petitions for both new political parties and for independent candidates (for office other than president) to submit petitions, those deadlines would become even earlier.

Existing law puts the new party deadline in late May, and the non-presidential independent candidate deadline in early May. If the bill is passed, those deadlines would be in April. That would give Texas the 2nd earliest petition deadline for new parties (except for states in which new parties must nominate by primary) in the nation. Only New Mexico, which has an early April deadline for new parties, would be earlier (again, except for states in which new parties nominate by primary).

The bill would also move the date on which independent candidates (other than president) must file a declaration of candidacy from January of the election year, to December of the year before the election. In some years, depending on the calendar, that deadline would even be in late November.