Oklahoma Senator Julia Kirt (D-Oklahoma City) has introduced SB 288. It eases the petition in lieu of the filing fee. Current law requires a petition of 2% of the number of registered voters for candidates who choose not to pay filing fees. For statewide office, this is 44,502 signatures. The bill would lower the number of signatures to 4,000 for important statewide office, and 2,000 for the less important statewide offices and U.S. House.
Utah Representative Jordan Teuscher (R-South Jordan) has introduced HB 393. It would allow parties to skip primaries for any office for which a party meeting had endorsed one particular candidate, and that candidate received at least 70% of the vote from the delegates. Here is the text.
Bills have been introduced in Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Missouri, and Texas, to have those states join the National Popular Vote Plan Pact.
Alaska: SB 61.
Arizona: SB 1485.
Florida: HB 53.
Missouri: HB 829.
Texas: SB 95 and HB 237.
On February 8, the New Mexico House Government, Elections & Indian Affairs Committee passed HB 4. It provides that every adult citizen-resident known to exist would automatically be registered, unless he or she opted out.
On February 7, the Washington State Senate Committee on State Government and Elections passed SB 5209 by 4-3. It makes voting mandatory. Here is the text. It is sponsored by 14 Democratic State Senators: Sam Hunt, Andy Bilig, Lisa Wellman, Bob Hasegawa, Lisa Lovelett, Rebecca Saldana, Mark Liias, Steve Conway, Manka Dhingra, Karen Keiser, Patty Kuderer, Joe Nguyen, Javiere Valdez, and Claire Wilson.
It is ironic that a bill for mandatory voting is making headway in the state with one of the least choices on general election ballots. Washington uses a top-two system, so that there are never more than two candidate on the general election ballot for congress or any partisan state office. No minor party candidate has ever managed to qualify for the November ballot for one of those offices if both major parties had a member who filed in the primary for that same office.
Furthermore, Washington has the most restrictive definition of a qualified party in any state in the western half of the
United States. It is the only state in the western half of the nation in which only the Democratic and Republican Parties have been qualified during the last twenty years. The definition of a qualified party in Washington is one that polled 5% for president in the last general election.
