Minnesota SF1298 passed the Senate on April 27. Fortunately, the part of the bill making it more difficult for new parties to qualify for the ballot had been amended out of the bill on April 19.

Minnesota currently requires a group that wants to transform itself into a ballot-qualified party to submit a petition signed by 5% of the last vote cast. This petition is so difficult, it has never been used, even though it has been in existence since 1913. The law set no limit on when such a petition could start to circulate, and said it was due in July of election years. SF1298, as originally introduced, set a January 1 start date on such petitions, and moved the deadline from July to May, but those parts of the bill were deleted.

The 8-candidate Democratic presidential debate held on April 26 has received a great deal of press coverage. The consensus seems to be that having that many candidates did not spoil the debate. The debate was 90 minutes long. Although not every candidate received an equal amount of time, every candidate was able to give a clear impression of himself or herself. The New York Times of April 27 ran a separate article on Mike Gravel’s performance. Of the eight candidates, Gravel was considered the least likely to be nominated, but the article says “If Mr. Gravel, 77, did not steal the show, he certainly stole some of the limited sound-bite pie…He served as a kind of cranky uncle in the solemn field of well-barbered, sound-bite practitioners with whom he shared the stage, joining the other long shot, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, in berating the others as being too cautious in trying to get troops out of Iraq.”

An organization called Rock the Debates is organizing, and hopes to create a large number of ordinary people who live in states like Iowa and New Hampshire to ask the leading major party presidential candidates if they will commit to at least one general election debate that includes all the candidates who are on the ballot in enough states to theoretically win the election. Rock the Debates efforts will be encouraged by the example of the April 26 debate. Never before in U.S. history have there been more than 7 presidential candidates in the general election who were on the ballot in enough states to win, so an inclusive general election debate would be practical.

On April 26, the Montana House passed SB 96, which makes it illegal to pay initiative petition circulators on a per-signature basis, and makes it illegal for non-residents of Montana to circulate. The vote in the House was 86-14; the vote in the Senate on the previous day had been 45-5.