A crush of bills prohibiting abortion, censoring reading and speech in schools and libraries, and diverting public money to private schools has taken up most of the energy of the General Assembly to date. We have not yet had success in diverting legislative attention to moving forward with additional bills summarized in an earlier MDW Update. 

However, there has been some activity related to voting and elections. A Senate subcommittee has favorably reviewed the appointment of Howard Knapp as Executive Director of the State Election Commission and has taken up three bills, none of them having features that raise concern for voter access. 

• S.92 brings Section 7-5-321 into conformity with provisions elsewhere in statute that provide additional time to file a protest of an election when the Monday following election certification falls on a holiday.
• S.405 requires security features, clarifies technical points, and provides conformity with federal law for the certification of electors for the President and Vice President of the United States. It also deletes reference to the Governor in dealing with contested slates of electors and transfers that authority to the State and Federal courts.
• S.406 permits the tabulation of early voting ballots on the same day and time as absentee ballots.

All three were passed out with favorable reports, S.405 without amendment and S.92 and S. 406 with amendments. 

We will continue the effort to have legislators file additional “fixes” addressing problems in or generally improving current election law.