HR 1316, a campaign finance bill, passed the US House Administration Committee on June 8. It is co-sponsored by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) and Rep. Albert Wynn (D-Maryland). It will probably receive a vote in the full House in July.

Current law controls the amount of money an individual can give to political parties in support of that party’s federal campaigns. Current law sets these limits for every two-year period: $53,400 to the national committee of a political party; $53,400 to the same party’s senate campaign committee; and $53,400 to the same party’s house campaign committee. Also, the same individual can give $20,000 to a state political party for use in federal races.

However, current law says the combined total that an individual can give in a two-year period to all these party committees is capped at $101,400. HR 1316 removes this cap. Therefore, if someone as wealthy as Ross Perot were financing the birth of a new political party, that individual (if the bill passes) could give $1,180,200 to that new party for federal campaign activity, instead of only $101,400, in a 2-year period.

On June 7, the Louisiana House Governmental Affairs Committee passed SB 53, but in a drastically different form. SB 53 in its latest incarnation changes the state’s congressional elections to a semi-closed primary system, a big change from the current system.

Senator Cleo Fields, author of SB 53, introduced it earlier this year as a bill to set up semi-closed primary elections in congressional elections, and in that form, it passed the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. But then he changed the bill into a version of the “top-two” system (but with a timing difference), and in that form it passed the House last month. Now the bill is back to its original version. If it passes the House in this latest version, it will then need to go back to the Senate to see if the Senate concurs.

On June 1, Colorado Governor Bill Owens vetoed HB 1147, which would have eased restrictions on who can circulate a petition. The bill would have let any adult U.S. citizen who is a resident of Colorado circulate any kind of petition, anywhere in the state. Governor Owens said he vetoed the bill for two reasons: (1) he feels that petitions to get a candidate on the ballot in a partisan primary should only be circulated by members of that party; (2) he favors requiring circulators to wear a badge indicating whether they are being paid or not.

The current Colorado laws on who can circulate a petition (for initiatives, anyway) were held unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999 in Buckley v American Constitutional Law Foundation. The Governor said the laws held unconstitutional ought to be repealed, but that there is no reason to repeal other such laws that have not yet been declared unconstitutional.