On February 8, the Federal Election Commission voted 6-0 to approve the Green Party’s submission, setting up the Green Party Senate Campaign Committee. The advantage to any political party to having an FEC-recognized Senate Campaign Committee (or a House Committee), is that individual donors can give far more money to such a committee than they can to any particular candidate for Congress.

Until today, no other political party has ever had an FEC-recognized Campaign Committee for either house of congress, except for the Republican and Democratic Parties.

The FEC recognizes 8 national political committees (Democratic, Republican, Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Natural Law, Reform and Socialist). The Libertarian Party has been thinking about setting up FEC-recognized congressional committees for some time, but has not acted on the idea.

On February 6, the National Popular Vote plan passed the Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee by a vote of 5-0. The bill is SB 1956. The committee has four Democrats and one Republican.

On February 7, the South Dakota House of Representatives voted on HB 1272, which would move that state’s presidential primary from June to February 5. The vote was 35-35, so the bill failed, although the sponsor will seek reconsideration. The sponsor is Rep. Shantel Krebs (R-Sioux Falls).