On August 24, the Pennsylvania Attorney General responded to the lawsuit Constitution Party of Pennsylvania v Cortes, which was filed in federal court in Philadelphia on April 21, 2009. Here is the state’s brief.
The state completely ignores the part of the lawsuit that challenges the 15% registration membership for a party to be on the general election ballot automatically. The state also completely ignores the point raised by the Green Party, which is that although the state tallied the write-ins for Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party nominee for president in 2008), it did not do so for Cynthia McKinney (Green Party nominee for president in 2008). This, despite the fact that McKinney filed a list of presidential elector candidates and asked that her write-ins be tallied.
As to the point that certain counties failed to tally any write-ins at all, the state simply says the plaintiffs should sue those counties, not the state.
As to the most important point in the lawsuit, that the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from charging candidates and/or voters for the costs of election administration, the state does not mention any of the precedents on which the plaintiffs rely, such as cases striking down fees for checking signatures, or cases striking down mandatory filing fees for candidates, or the U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down poll taxes for voters.
Richard, which section of the constitution prohibits charging candidates for the cost of election administration?
Section one of the 14th amendment. That was what the U.S. Supreme Court based its anti-poll tax on. Most voters could easily afford the poll tax, but some couldn’t. The case was called Harper v Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 US 663 (1966). Then in 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court extended the same idea to candidate filing fees.