House panel Oks ditching runoff, campaign finance fixes

The House elections and constitutional amendment committee approved the bill by Sen. Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, to eliminate the runoff election for a gubernatorial election.

"We narrowly avoided one of them last year," Thayer said.

The committee unanimously approved getting rid of the extra election, which would cost about $7 million if no gubernatorial candidate received at least 40 percent of the vote in a party primary for governor.

The committee also passed a bill that would tweak campaign laws, including allowing people to request absentee ballots by e-mail.

Those bills, which received little discussion, were the warm-up acts for the casino gambling constitutional amendment, which the panel took up next.

- Ryan Alessi