It had already been known that the U.S. Supreme Court conference of February 16 would be considering 3 different election law cases (the conference is where the Court decides which cases to hear). But now a fourth case has been added to the February 16 conference. It is Initiative & Referendum Institute v Herbert, 06-534. The issue is whether a state that has the initiative process can “fence out” initiatives on one particular narrow topic and require that initiatives on that one subject need a 2/3rds vote to pass (when all other statutory initiatives only need a majority). Utah has such a provision for initiatives dealing with wildlife.

Oregon HB 2084 would let the Secretary of State set a presidential primary date. The bill was requested by Bill Bradbury, current Secretary of State. Presumably if the bill passed, he would use his new authority to move the presidential primary to a month earlier than May (current law puts the Oregon presidential primary in May).

Ten Washington State Senators, all Democrats, recently introduced SB 5356, which would make it illegal for petition circulators to be paid on a per-signature basis. The bill applies to initiatives and other types of petitions as well. The sponsors are Adam Kline, Darlene Fairley, Karen Fraser, Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Craig Pridemore, Debbie Regala, Erick Poulsen, Karen Keiser, Rodney Tom, and Rosemary McAuliffe.