February 21 was the deadline for anyone to file a challenge to the petition of a Democratic or Republican candidate seeking a place on the April 22 Pennsylvania primaries. Approximately 60 challenges were filed. Pennsylvania primary candidates need 2,000 signatures for statewide office. Some statewide offices also have county distribution requirements.

Four candidates filed for the Democratic primary for State Treasurer. They are Dennis Morrison-Wesley, Jennifer Mann, Rob McCord, and John F. Cordisco. McCord challenged Morrison-Wesley and Mann on the grounds that their petitions lacked at least 100 signatures from each of five counties.

All county distribution requirements for statewide petitions were invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969, in an Illinois case called Moore v Ogilvie. No state still has any statewide candidate petitions with county distribution requirements except Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania state courts have upheld that state’s county distribution requirements, notwithstanding Moore v Ogilvie. However, in December 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court again reiterated what it had said in Moore v Ogilvie. In Bush v Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court said, “We relied on these principles in the context of the presidential selection process in Moore v Ogilvie, where we invalidated a county-based procedure that diluted the influence of citizens in larger counties in the nominating process. There we observed that ‘the idea that one group can be granted greater voting strength than another is hostile to the one man, one vote basis of our representative government’.”

Bush v Gore gave additional new prestige to the old precedent Moore v Ogilvie, to the extent that lower courts started invalidating county distribution requirements for initiatives. Perhaps one of the challenged candidates for Pennsylvania Treasurer will notice this development in the law, and challenge the Pennsylvania county distribution requirement for statewide petitions.