Senate Government Operations panel approves trimmed elections bill (H.474, draft 11.3)

The Senate Government Operations Committee voted to report H.474 favorably in its pared-down draft 11.3 on June 10, 2025, moving the elections bill to the notice calendar for Friday and the action calendar for Monday.

The committee’s narrowed bill preserves a set of provisions the Secretary of State said are essential to run the 2026 statewide elections and removes a number of local-election items. "Moving an elections bill in an election year, is really, against a longstanding policy that the secretary of state has had," said Lauren Hibbert, deputy secretary of state, explaining why the office prioritized a shorter package of operational changes.

Why it matters: Committee members and the Secretary of State’s office told the committee they wanted to ensure key administrative and campaign-finance clarifications are in place well ahead of 2026. The retained sections cover candidate filing rules, ballot-delivery clarifications for overseas and address-confidentiality voters, reporting requirements for write-in candidates, campaign finance registration and reporting (including independent-expenditure-only political committees), audits of voter checklists and district boundaries, changes to voter-fraud definitions, petition-review periods, and an automatic voter-registration clarification tied to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Legislative counsel Tim Depplin told the committee that the new strike-all amendment does not alter the substantive language the committee already debated: "[The] strike all amendment ... doesn't change the substance of any of the sections that were debated and deliberated by the committee to date." He said the version will resemble the earlier draft the committee discussed and that the deletions largely remove local-election provisions.

A key technical change kept in draft 11.3 is an amendment to the statutory definition of a "campaign" so that a campaign or committee may be constituted by a single person rather than requiring two or more people. Deputy Secretary Hibbert and others argued the change was needed so that individuals who act alone to make independent expenditures are captured by the registration and reporting rules that apply to other political committees. "If the definition of committee remains 2 or more, and [someone] is only using his money acting alone ... they might think that they do not have to register their activity," Hibbert said, citing recent national examples of high-dollar individual spending.

What was removed: The draft removes several local-election provisions that had been in earlier versions of the bill, including sections on local municipal procedures, vacancies in town offices, constable authority, listing candidate names on ballots, and certain municipal charter notice changes. Committee members and the Secretary of State’s office said they removed those items to shorten the bill to time-sensitive, operational items for statewide primary and general elections.

Committee debate and next steps: Senators on both sides of the aisle spoke in favor of keeping the campaign-finance clarifications, with Senator White saying, "I am in favor of this addition," referring to the single-person campaign definition. Chair Collinmore said he asked the Secretary of State’s office to identify five or six "must have" topics so the committee could move a concise bill quickly and potentially complete final steps on the floor by Tuesday so the bill could be sent to the governor.

Vote: The motion to report H.474 (draft 11.3) favorably passed on a roll call. Recorded remarks during the roll call included affirmative votes from the senators identified in the record as "Senator Clark(s)," Senator Hart, Senator White and Senator Collin (recorded as yes) and a recorded no vote from "Senator Gichowski." The committee chair announced the motion carried and said he would take the bill "upstairs" for the next stage.

The committee posted draft 11.3 on its website and planned to put the bill on notice Friday for action Monday; committee leadership said they planned to divide reporter duties so members could present different sections on the floor. The Secretary of State’s office said it will continue to press for the retained provisions and that the local-election issues removed could be revisited in a non-election year.

Votes at a glance: - Motion: Report H.474 (elections miscellaneous bill), favorably, draft 11.3. Moved by Chair Collinmore (mover not specified in record); second not specified. Recorded roll-call mentions: "Senator Clark(s) — yes; Senator Hart — yes; Senator Gichowski — no; Senator White — yes; Senator Collin — yes." Chair announced the motion carried.

The committee meeting lasted approximately 39 minutes and focused almost entirely on the single substantive agenda item: whether to advance the pared-down elections bill and on which sections to retain for the 2026 election cycle.