On March 2, 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Stewart Dalzell, a Bush Sr. appointee, struck down three Pennsylvania ballot access barriers, but only as applied to the Green Party and the Libertarian Party. The laws are: (1) the ban on out-of-state circulators; (2) the requirement that each petition sheet be notarized; (3) the prohibition on a voter signing for more than one minor party in any given election year.
(As to the notarization part of the decision, it interprets Pennsylvania election law to not require notarization of petitions, but it also says that if the law did require notarization, it would be unconstitutional. The law says the circulators must sign the petitions in their capacity as “affiants”. The state has always believed an “affiant” is someone who appears in front of a notary, but the decision says that is not necessarily so).
Judge Dalzell ruled against the minor parties on the issue of whether unregistered voters can sign petitions, and in a supplementary decision on May 11, he upheld the law that doesn’t permit signers from different counties on the same sheet. The case is Green Party of Pennsylvania et al v Aichele, e.d., 2:14cv-3299.
He also ruled that some of the other problems are moot, because the state has already voluntarily eased them. The state already agreed that the signers don’t need to include the year, when they fill in their date of signing. Also the state already agreed to drop language from the petition that implies it is still unconstitutional for circulators to live outside the district or outside the state. Finally, the state already agreed to eliminate blank space for presidential elector candidates on the state-printed petition forms, if the group doesn’t have candidates for presidential elector. Eliminating the spaces for presidential electors increases space for more signature blank lines on a single sheet.
Oddly, the relief is limited only to the plaintiffs in the case, the Green and Libertarian Parties. There will probably be new lawsuits filed by other plaintiffs, which probably will result in an expansion of the relief to all petitioning groups, at least for general election petitions.
This is great news.
Hasn’t the ban on out-of-state petition circulators also been lifted on major party primary petitions as well?
no. Just the ban on out-of-district petitioners.
Since the ban on out-of-state petition circulators has been thrown out for minor party petitions, shouldn’t it also be thrown out for major party petitions?
Logically, yes. Pennsylvania is very piecemeal in recognizing new rights. Even after the out-of-distrct law was struck down for general election petitions, lower state Pennsylvania courts kept enforcing the out-of-district rule for primary petitions, until years later, when the Pa. Supreme Court said the in-district law is also void for primary petitioners.
The rationale for limiting the decision to the Green and Libertarian parties is that the court treated it as an as-applied challenge rather than a facial challenge.
The decision suggests that some form of registration by out-of-state applicants would be lawful, since that could make them subject to subpoena.
I don’t think that the decision says that notarization is unconstitutional, but rather requiring notarization of each sheet individually. Also it appears that major party candidate petitions do not require notarization. The decision cites ‘Bullock v Carter’, but ignores ‘American Party of Texas v White’. At the time of that decision, each signature had to be notarized.
The reason for permitting signing of multiple petitions is because Pennsylvania permits stacking, where a voter can sign for candidates of more than one office.
All of these problems would go away if Pennsylvania would eliminate partisan nomination of candidates for public office.
Hon Don Wills wrote on Ballot Access News article commentary;
“you don’t seem to understand the difference between politics and fantasyland. Politics is the art of the possible. Fantasyland is the world that does not exist, and will never exist. It is possible to get to IRV from where we are now. It is not possible to get to where you want to go.”
Next he writes:
“The only way to get to proportional representation is to abolish the states, and along with them the Senate and House as we know them today. That’s not gonna happen. Ever. The USA will dissolve or explode first.”
http://ballot-access.org/2015/05/17/washington-post-again-endorses-instant-runoff-voting-for-washington-d-c-city-council-races/#comments
* * *
NEWSFLASH FOR DON AND OTHER MAL-INFORMED!!!
The city of Cambridge MA HAS BEEN USING RANKED CHOICE VOTING in city at-large elections for the city council for all nine city council members, for close to 70 years.
* * *
Me:
Don Wills says that proportional representation will require that we “abolish the states” and that’s why we need Rob Richie’s IRV. Really Don?
* * *
To clarify, we don’t need STV (single-transferable vote) and we don’t need IRV (instant runoff voting), to get pure proportional representation.
For pure proportional representation we do need ranked choice voting (RCV).
But STV and IRV is wasted time since we get the same mathematical results under RCV, without extra time wasted using STV and IRV.
After doing this every year for twenty consecutive years, I speak from experience, and I welcome interested persons to experience the 9th USA Parliament and International Parliament’s unity phenomena where we welcome the 100% with open arms.
http://usparliament.org/
The second law being declared unconstitutional might have implications for Illinois, which I believe also has a law requiring each petition page to be notarized.
Why was the relief limited to the Libertarian and Green Parties?
“(3) the prohibition on a voter signing for more than one minor party in any given election year.”
I think this might be a miswording. To my knowledge there never was a prohibition on a voter signing for more than one PARTY in a give year. The prohibition was on signing for more candidates for a given office than one could actually vote for, which meant that if you signed for one party’s nominee for an office where only one person could be elected, they you couldn’t sign for some other party’s candidate for that specific office. Combined with the fact that sheets are generally “stacked” with a slate of candidates this had the practical effect of prohibiting signing for multiple parties, but in principle a person could sign sheets for different parties so long as those sheets did not include candidates for the same office.
“Why was the relief limited to the Libertarian and Green Parties?”
My understanding is that the federal court dismissed the facial challenges to the laws – which would mean that they were unconstitutional under all circumstances. Instead the decision was based on how the laws applied to the Libertarian and Green parties specifically. For example, the Green Party said they would have party members from New York and New Jersey coming into the state. A Pennsylvania-based party might be able to depend on indigenous supporters. Similarly, the Green Party had objections to the total cost of hiring notaries public. Other parties may have no trouble finding a notary who will witness for free.
And to think the Prohibition Party donated over $3000 to a Legislator to a Pennsylvania legislature . These major party legislators will take our money and will laugh all the way to the bank!
Three grand just covered his bar tab! The money never saw the bank.