On October 21, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court refused to re-open the question of whether the 2006 Green Party U.S. Senate candidate must pay approximately $80,000 in costs to the people who challenged the party’s statewide petition. The vote was 5-1, with one Justice not voting. Only Justice Saylor would have re-opened the matter. Therefore, the party’s candidate for U.S. Senate, along with his attorney, are still liable for the payment, even though it is uncontradicted that the challenge to the party’s statewide petition was a criminal enterprise. On November 5, two Pennsylvania state employees who worked on the challenge to the party’s 2006 petition are expected to plead guilty. Challenges in Pennsylvania to petitions are brought by private individuals, not by any arm of the government. Yet, in fact, the challenges were brought by people using state employees, state computers, and state payroll hours.
On the somewhat similar matter involving Ralph Nader’s 2004 petition, that matter had not been in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court; it had been in the Commonwealth Court. It is still pending.
This is disgusting!
Richard,
The loss in CT and now this one.
There is a major court bias against ballot access rights. It is not getting better. Some judges have and are building their careers by promising to protect the two major parties and always vote against the rights of voters, candidates, 3rd parties and independents.
With one Supreme Court vote GUARANTEED to always vote against democracy, the cards are stacked against us, and many lower court judges are following in his footsteps.
PLEASE take this to the US Supremes
There is an alternate idea, that a federal lawsuit could be filed, arguing that the US Constitution prevents governments from charging people money to exercise their voting rights, unless there is a compelling interest. Mandatory filing fees are unconstitutional, at least for poor candidates; poll taxes are unconstitutional. The 8th circuit ruled that if a state requires parties to pay for their own primaries, the government must pay to administer the primaries. Federal courts have struck down fees for candidates and parties to pay to have their own ballot access petitions checked. So there is plenty of good precedent.
Fact is, the Greens did submit petitions with dodgoy names on them, which is why they lost the legal case and have to pay costs. The Greens seem to include some of the best people, determined to work for real social justice and protect the environment, and some of the worst who really believe that the truth doesn’t matter and undermining the democratic system is a positive. Cynthia McKinney, now pushing a fairy story about the Government having shot 15,000 prisoners in the head during hurricane Katrina, is in the latter camp. And it seems to me Ralph Nader deliberately focused on the swing states in 2000 and seemed to have no problem with helping Bush into office and to be even happier about producing a disputed result.
Jacob
I must put this politely, your an f#cking idiot!