On January 9, West Virginia State Senator Clark Barnes introduced SB 49. It improves the definition of “political party”. Currently, a qualified party is one that polled 1% for its candidate for Governor in the last election.

The bill expands that to a group that polled 1% for any of its statewide state office candidates. It is always easier for a minor party to poll a relatively large vote for a less important statewide office, than an office like President, Governor, or U.S. Senator.

The bill also says a qualified party is any group that persuades 1% of all the registered voters to register into it. Senator Barnes is the Republican whip in the State Senate.

Also on January 9, Delegate Barbara Fleischauer and seven other Delegates introduced HB 3144. It lowers the petition for previously unqualified parties and independent candidates from 2% of the last vote, to 1%. It also deletes various obsolete provisions from the law that have already been declared unconstitutional. The West Virginia petition for statewide office was only 1,000 signatures until 1932. Then it was raised to 1% of the last vote cast, and in 1999 it was raised again, to 2%.

The webpage www.openballotvoting.org has just been established. The purpose of the site is to promote bills in state legislatures that let two political parties jointly nominate the same candidate. This is commonly caused “fusion”. The page lays special emphasis on the bills now pending in Maine and Oregon that would legalize fusion.

The New Hampshire Secretary of State webpage has posted results of the partial Democratic presidential primary recount. See here. The recount was requested by Dennis Kucinich. He only requested a recount in the state’s two largest counties. Even in those two counties, some towns were not recounted because Kucinich was unable or unwilling to pay for the entire recount.

The recount results are somewhat difficult to summarize, because of the large number of candidates (22) on the Democratic presidential primary ballot.