On February 9, the Mississippi Senate passed SCR 533 and SB 2638. They restore the statewide initiative process. Mississippi had the initiative process until 2021, when the State Supreme Court ruled the old law was fatally flawed and couldn’t be used. The problem with the old law was that it said signatures were needed from all five of the state’s congressional districts, but afterwards the state lost one of its U.S. House districts.

The new bill is considerably harsher than the old law. The old law required signatures of 12% of the last gubernatorial vote, but the new bill requires 12% of the number of registered voters. The old requirement, after the 2019 gubernatorial election, was 106,190 signatures, but the new requirement is approximately 240,000.

The bill says no one may circulate the petition who doesn’t live in Mississippi, and bans paying circulators on a per-signature basis. But the old law had those characteristics also. The new bill requires the 12% requirement to be met in every U.S. House district, but the old law had that provision as well.

The bills now go to the House. If they pass, the voters will vote on the idea in November 2023.

This New Jersey Globe story explains that New Jersey allows voters to register into any unqualified party that ever sued the state to obtain registration rights. The seven unqualified parties that have sued the state over registration are the Libertarian, Green, Natural Law, Reform, Constitution, Socialist, and Conservative Parties. Some of these parties no longer exist. But because the legislature has never enacted any law to determine which unqualified parties have registration rights, the original list remains in place, and there is no mechanism for a new minor party to apply for registration rights.

The article mentions the Moderate Party of New Jersey, which is suing the state over fusion. The Moderate Party says the State Constitution requires the state to allow two parties to jointly nominate the same candidate. Ironically, though, as the article mentions, the Moderate Party can’t even have registered members, because there is no law or regulation on how an unqualified party can get registration rights. Of course, the Moderate Party could sue the state to get registration rights, and presumably would win.

Vermont permits aggregated fusion. It is possible for two parties to nominate the same person, but in order to get the nomination of a second party, the candidate must win that party’s nod by write-ins at the primary. When someone is the nominee of two parties, both party labels are printed on the November ballot next to the candidate’s name, but there is only one square on the ballot to vote for that person, so the voter can’t demonstrate which party is preferred.

Vermont Representative Michael McCarthy (D-St. Albans) has introduced Draft Bill 23-0705. Because it is just a draft bill, not an introduced bill, the text is not available on the Vermont legislature’s website. But according to this article, it would ban fusion. The article says that Representative McCarthy wants to ban fusion because of the 2022 election for Sheriff in Franklin County. That is puzzling, because in that race, only one candidate’s name was printed on the ballot. He was John Grismore, and he had the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. But he was found to have kicked a prisoner in August 2022, and two individuals then declared write-in candidacies against him. However, Grismore was elected, although he is still facing charges.

It’s not clear why Representative McCarthy wants to ban fusion. His bill also alters the filing deadline for independent candidates, but the article doesn’t say whether he wants to make that deadline earlier, or later. Perhaps he wants to make it later, so that in the Franklin County sheriff’s race, it would have been possible for an independent to have qualified. The current deadline is in early August, which was a little bit too early to allow a new candidate into the race. The article says the draft also would require write-in candidates to file a declaration of candidacy in order for the write-ins to be counted.