On February 21, the North Dakota Senate passed SCR 4013 by 44-3. It requires initiative circulators to have lived in the state for 120 days before the first signature is collected. It bans paying initiative circulators. If the legislature passes it, it will go on the ballot in November 2024 for a public vote, because it is a constitutional amendment.

On February 28, Tuesday, Minnesota State Senator Jim Carlson will present his SF 1827, the bill to stiffen the definition of a qualified party from a group that got 5% of the vote for a statewide office in either of the last two elections, to 10%.

Already the definition is too difficult. The only states with 10% vote tests are Virginia and New Jersey (and one state, Alabama, has an even higher vote test, 20%). The median vote test of the 50 states is 2% (although some states don’t have vote tests, and instead use registration data, or level of organization).

Senator Carlson will probably say that the Legal Marijuana Now Party, and the Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party, should not have been given qualified status. Because Minnesota forces all qualified parties to nominate by primary, and because Minnesota has an open primary, there have been instances when insincere candidates filed on the primaries of the marijuana parties, just because they wanted to injure the Democratic nominee. But a solution to that is for Minnesota to let small qualified parties nominate by convention, so that party leaders could avoid having insincere nominees. Neighbors of Minnesota that do that are Michigan and South Dakota.

The hearing is at 3 p.m. There will be a press conference before the hearing, involving activists from the Independence, Libertarian, and Green Parties.