On April 17, the California Assembly Elections Committee passed AB 1662, AB 1294, and AB 583. AB 1662 authorizes use of Instant-Runoff Voting for overseas voters (military and civilian), in any election for which a run-off is potentially required (such as many non-partisan elections, and also special congressional and legislative elections). AB 1294 lets any city or county use IRV or Choice Voting, for its own elections (currently, only charter cities and charter counties may use IRV).

AB 583 provides for public funding for candidates for state office. Independent candidates would need to raise twice as many qualifying $5 contributions, in order to receive public funding, compared to Democrats and Republicans. A witness pointed out that only eight independent candidates have appeared on the California ballot for regularly-scheduled state office in the last 27 years, and that in four of these instances, the independent candidate was elected. In another two instances, the independent placed 2nd but ahead of one of the major party nominees. However, this testimony seemed to make no difference; the bill passed without any amendment to ease the discrimination.

On April 11, the Montana Senate State Administration Committee tabled HB 797, which had earlier passed the House. It moved the presidential primary from June to February.

On April 16, Nigeria’s highest court ruled that one of the presidential candidates had been removed from the ballot illegally, and ordered him reinstated. The presidential election is scheduled for April 21. The Electoral Commission said it could cope, even though millions of ballots had already been printed without his name. The excluded candidate is Atiku Abubakar, the current vice-president. He was removed from the ballot last month because the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had ruled that he is corrupt. The Commission removed other candidates for lesser office from the ballot as well, but critics noted that most of the candidates removed by the Commission are opposed to the governing Peoples Democratic Party.

Atiku Abubakar is the presidential candidate of the newly-formed Action Congress Party. His chief opponent is Umaru Yar’ Adua. Both are Muslim.