On February 20, the Kentucky Senate passed SB 80. It restores voting rights for most felons after completion of their sentence. Certain felonies are excluded: treason, Bribery at an election, election fraud, violent felony offensses, felong sexual abuse, and criminal offense against a child. If the bill passes, the voters would vote on the bill, because it is a proposed constitutional amendment.
A bill in the Washington state legislature to ban paying initiative petitioners on a per-signature basis is dead. SB 5973 did not advance through the Senate, and it is now too late for it to pass.
The Illinois Green Party will attempt to place its statewide slate on the 2026 ballot. See here for the list of the statewide slate. The party did not get on the statewide ballot in 2024. It is likely that the Green Party will be the only third party that petitions for statewide office in Illinois this year, except for the Independence Party. The law requires 25,000 signatures. The state does not permit petitioning to begin until February 22, and the signatures are due in late May. The deadline is probably unconstitutionally early.
The Harvard Political Review has this article by Noah Chung-Igelman. It gives the history of strong independent U.S. Senate campaigns in the last twelve years, and explains why none of them succeeded in electing a new independent member of the U.S. Senate. It discusses possibilities for 2026.
On February 11, the Wisconsin legislature passed AB 223, which bans out-of-state circulators for candidate petitions and recall petitions. Wisconsin doesn’t have the initiative or referendum. In the Senate the vote was party-line, with all Democrats voting “no” and all Republicans voting “yes.” Wisconsin has a Democratic Governor, so it’s possible this bill will be vetoed.
Oddly the bill does not cover petitions to create a new party. That type of petition, which requires 10,000 signatures, is very seldom used. Generally minor parties become ballot-qualified by circulating a candidate petition for a statewide office and having that candidate poll at least 1% of the vote.
Wisconsin is in the Seventh Circuit. In 2000 the Seventh Circuit ruled that it is unconstitutional for a state to ban out-of-state circulators. Krislov v Rednour, 226 F.3d 851. That was an Illinois case. Illinois appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that court refused to hear it.
