On April 16, Alabama HB 738 passed the House Constitution and Elections Committee unanimously. It lowers the number of signatures for non-presidential independent candidates from 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, to 1.5%. Unfortunately it doesn’t also improve the minor party petition requirement. Thanks to ThirdPartyWatch for this news.
On April 16, the Missouri House Rules Committee passed SB797 and sent it to the House floor as a “Consent” bill. “Consent” bills have no known opposition. The bill fixes the typographical error in the procedure passed in 1993, by which a group becomes a qualified party. It deletes the requirement that the group’s petition list a candidate for president and for presidential electors.
On April 16, Zogby Polls released results of a presidential general election poll that includes both Ralph Nader and Bob Barr.
The results if Obama is the Democratic nominee: Obama 44, McCain 42, Nader 3, Barr 2, other/undecided 12.
The results if Clinton is the Democratic nominee: McCain 45, Clinton 39, Nader 3, Barr 2, other/undecided 9. See more details here. Thanks to ThirdPartyWatch for this news.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court released 3 decisions on April 16, it did not release the decision in the Indiana photo voter ID case for voting at the polls. The next possible date for that decision is April 21.
Both houses of the Hawaii legislature have passed HB 661, which establishes a pilot project of public funding for Hawaii County Council elections. Hawaii County has non-partisan elections for county council, so naturally the bill treats all candidates equally (when public funding bills are introduced for partisan elections, sometimes they are written to discriminate in favor of Republican and Democratic nominees).
The bill is in conference committee. Here is a somewhat amusing news story about the bill. Some of the funniest parts are toward the end of the article.
