Just when it appeared the controversial election bills involving the Permanent Early Voting List were dead, they received new life last week after Senate leadership introduced an elections omnibus bill incorporating five measures.

Then they stalled again.

A lawsuit challenging a 2012 state law that would require Arizona’s local governments to move their elections to even-numbered years is now on track to go to trial.

Arizona Senate leaders resurrected a handful of election bills Tuesday that had been stalled amid opposition from Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups worried about voter disenfranchisement.

Unable or unwilling to take on Medicaid expansion at the Capitol, House speaker Andy Tobin wants to ask voters in the state whether they want to expand Medicaid coverage. He is working on a resolution to send the question to the ballot in a special election this year.

Several bills introduced at the Legislature this year have taken swipes at Clean Elections, but not so boldly as Rep. Paul Boyer’s concurrent resolution to swipe all monies from the Clean Elections system in favor of funding the state’s education needs.

A group trying to oust Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is again paying professionals to gather signatures from voters in a bid to force a recall election against the lawman.

Long-time Arizona Clean Elections Commission executive director Todd Lang is leaving his post to work as assistant U.S. attorney.

Although cities are concerned about how they will comply with the changes resulting from consolidated elections, all the worry may be for naught, at least for charter cities, if a legal challenge against the law is successful.

When voters in Tucson and Phoenix went to the polls to elect their mayors in 2011, voters elected them for four years. But a bill passed last year by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer may extend the mayors’ time in office by a year. Or it may shorten their terms by a year.

Nobody is sure which one it will be.

WASHINGTON — Some feisty Republicans are challenging a claim widely held among GOP leaders that the party must support more liberal immigration laws if it’s to be more competitive in presidential elections.