On March 3, the Utah Senate killed HJR 17, which would have required initiatives to pass with 60%. The House had passed it earlier.
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On March 22, the New Hampshire House tabled HB 363 by a voice vote. This is the bill that would have eased the deadline for an independent candidate, or the nominee of an unqualified party, to file a declaration of candidacy. Currently the deadline is in June, but the bill would have moved it to July and been especially useful to presidential candidates in the general election who don’t decide to run until the middle of the year.
The bill would also have de-coupled the independent candidate petition deadline from the date of the non-presidential primary, so in case the legislature moves the non-presidential primary from September to an earlier month, that would not have affected the independent candidate petition deadline. That deadline is in August now, but if the legislature moves the non-presidential primary to an earlier date, the deadline will get worse. Thanks to Darryl Perry for this news.
Vermont HB 149 would have required write-in candidates who want their write-ins counted to file a declaration of write-in candidacy. Most states have such laws, but Vermont never has. The bill had no progress and it is now too late for it to pass.
No Labels is about to launch a voter registration drive in California, to become a qualified party. It will use the registration method. It must persuade approximately 73,000 individuals to list No Labels as their party of membership, on voter registration forms.
Americans Elect, which was somewhat similar, qualified in California in 2011, using the more difficult method, a petition of 10% of the last gubernatorial vote. Americans Elect was a qualified party in California in 2012 and 2014, and had a few candidates, but didn’t run anyone for president.
On March 16, the Vermont Government Operations Committee passed SB 32. Originally it was a bill to use ranked choice voting in presidential primaries. But the committee amended it. Now it is a bill to let towns use ranked choice voting for their own elections without a charter change, and also the bill sets up a committee on how Vermont could transition to ranked choice voting for federal and state office.
Vermont has thought about using ranked choice voting for federal and state offices for over twenty years. In 1999 a bill, HB 199, was introduced that would have adopted ranked choice voting, but it didn’t pass.