On November 8, 2011, Pennsylvania voters will elect two statewide judges in partisan races. There is one race for Superior Court and one race for Commonwealth Court. Both are statewide posts.
The number of signatures needed for minor party and independent candidates to get on the November 2012 ballot for statewide office depends on the November 8, 2011 turnout. The 2012 petition requirement will equal 2% of the highest vote-getter’s vote among the four 2011 statewide major party candidates.
In November 2009, the Pennsylvania turnout for the statewide partisan judicial races was extremely low. As a result, the number of signatures needed in 2010 was only 19,082 signatures. Normally the requirement in Pennsylvania is approximately 25,000 signatures.
Now I feel like I shouldn’t have voted.
Me too!
Ballot Access Reform Now!
– $1,000 filing fee for all candidates
– 5% of the vote of the highest vote-getter guarantees automatic ballot access and automatic refund of filing fee
– Online petition signatures and multi-choice paper petition signatures (where all voters, registered or not, can decide to choose one or more candidates they’d like to see on the ballot)
I didn’t for that very reason (plus there was nobody worth voting for in my township or school district).
How come the PA robot party hacks did not do X which other party hack regimes do regarding ballot access ???
Solve for X. Not so secret.
P.R. and App.V.
Equal nominating petitions.
Well, I was on the ballot and I had to make sure I got at least one vote, which is probably about what it will amount to.
Derek,
I think the Voter Choice Act sponsored here in PA actually offers a better deal than what you are suggesting…at least at first blush.
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Looks like the top vote getter was Michael Eakin, retention for Justice of the Supreme Court. He received 1,077,941. By my calculation that means minor party statewide candidates in PA will need at least 21,558 valid signatures for the 2012 ballot.
I am awful with numbers so I will take your word for it. PA’s ballot access laws and election laws in general are horrific, but relatively speaking, the petition number threshold (if this figure holds) could be worse and has been at times in the past.
I’m not sure that people realize that it isn’t just the number of signatures required to get on the ballot (now coupled with practices of the GOPS and DEMS to challenge everything for the purpose of intimidation) that makes PA’s ballot access laws so bad, but that to STAY ON the ballot after the election the party must maintain 15% (!!!) of the total of the state registered voters–a ridiculously unrealistic requirement for any “new” party. This ensures that all parties other than the “GOPS” and the “DEMS” will always be starting over and perpetually outside the existing political culture of the state.
Please support state Senator Mike Folmer’s “Voter Choice Act”–SB 21. He has hopes that if he could get the chairman of the State Government Committee to just put it up for a vote that it would win. Its passage would change things considerably in the Keystone State. Please also support the Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition.
Retention election votes do not count in the calculation of the signature requirement – per previous PA Bureau of Elections rulings.
#11 is correct. If retention elections counted, the 2006 petition requirement would have been far lower. In 2005 there were retention elections with a low turnout, but no actual judicial candidate-versus-candidate elections. So the state said the number of signatures in 2006 depended on turnout in 2004, which meant in 2006, 66,827 signatures were required. Carl Romanelli argued in court that the 2005 retention election data should have been used, but he lost on that.