On March 9, the Mississippi House passed SCR 533. It would restore the initiative process. The House amended the bill to lower the number of signatures from 12% of the number of registered voters, to 12% of the last gubernatorial vote, so now the two versions of the bill differ and the Senate will consider the amendment.
On March 2, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed SB 1820, which bans any local government from using ranked choice voting. The bill impacts the city of Memphis, which had voted some time ago to use ranked choice voting for its own elections. The state had claimed that Memphis had no authority to do that, so it hadn’t been used yet.
Texas State Senator Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) has introduced SB 1705. It would require all qualified parties to nominate by primary. Current law says smaller qualified parties nominate by convention at their own expense. Texas is one of seventeen states with two tiers of qualified party, in which large parties nominate by primary and smaller ones by convention. The others are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Texas has always has two tiers of qualified party, ever since the beginning of government-printed ballots in 1903. Two-tiers is good public policy. Smaller qualified parties are not well served by primaries. The mainstream media generally does not cover contested primaries for small parties, and members of those parties are often without guidance when they participate in contested minor party primaries. Also government-administered primaries are expensive for taxpayers.
Nebraska State Senator Elliot Bostar (D-Lincoln) has introduced HB 776. It would provide that congressional elections in Nebraska be non-partisan. The bill would also convert the elections for state executive posts, and county executive posts, to non-partisan elections. Nebraska already has non-partisan legislative elections, although members of the legislature are almost always registered party members, and the press commonly identifies legislators by their party.
The bill had a hearing on March 2 but there seem to be no newspaper stories about the testimony.
The Utah legislature adjourned March 3. The Senate did not pass HB 393, or vote on it, even though the bill had passed the House in February. The bill would have provided that if a candidate for a party nomination gets at least 70% support at a party convention, no primary would be held for that office. The bill’s failure is good news for Senator Mitt Romney, who is up for re-election in 2024 and who is not popular with Republican Party officials in the state.
The Senate also didn’t take up HJR 17, a proposed constitutional amendment that had passed the House, and would have amended the Constitution to say that initiatives that raise taxes must pass by 60%.
