On the evening of June 23, the Pennsylvania Senate amended HB 342 and passed it unanimously. It improves ballot access for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties. Existing law requires signatures equal to 2% of the winning candidate’s vote, which, for statewide office this year, is 21,775 valid signatures. The bill sets a ceiling for all office of 5,000 signatures.
The bill was amended in a hurry, because the state had promised U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Stengel that if he held off on ruling whether the Constitution, Green, and Libertarian Parties should be put on the ballot automatically, that it was very likely the legislature would ease the ballot access laws in some way. The original bill was a very minor election law bill that had nothing to do with minor party or independent candidates.
The bill is very likely to pass the House again soon, and the Governor has indicated he will sign it as soon as it reaches him. If passed, it goes into effect immediately.
The bill is faulty because it requires a county distribution requirement for minor party and independent candidates for statewide state office. It requires signatures of at least 250 signatures from each of ten counties. All county distribution requirements for general election candidate petitions have long ago been declared unconstitutional. Those rulings were based on a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case, Moore v Ogilvie. There is no county distribution requirement currently in Pennsylvania law for general election petitions, but there is a county distribution requirement for primary candidates running for state office.
The bill requires 2,500 signatures for general election candidate petitions for U.S. House; 1,250 for State Senate; and 750 for State Representative.
Putting aside those unconstitutional distribution requirements for the moment, this would presumably mean the Libertarians are on since they had 8,000 signatures as of your June 1 issue. And the Greens had 4,500 then too — so they’re likely to be okay now, too.
Does the filing deadline change?
(And is this bill entirely separate from the “petition-challenge cost” issue?)
The bill also outlaws petition-challenge costs, unless the petitioning group commits fraud.
The bill does not change the August 1 petition deadline. If this bill weren’t being rushed through so fast, it should put the August 1 deadline into the election code. The election code still says the petitions are due in May, but they aren’t in reality, because in 1984 the state promised to use an August 1 deadline. But the legislature has never corrected the code to show that date. Logically a bill like this should do that, but it is a rush job.
The county distribution requirement is nothing like was required in Illinois.
I doubt that you could get 5000 signatures, and fail to get 250 signatures in 10 counties even if you tried.
All county distribution requirements are unconstitutional, no matter how easy they seem. They have been invalidated in every state that ever had them: Idaho (for initiatives), the modified Illinois requirement that no more than 13,000 of the 25,000 signatures be from one county), Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada (for initiatives), New York (affirmed by the US Supreme Court), Ohio (Socialist Labor Party v Rhodes), Rhode Island, and Wyoming. The Rhode Island requirement was only 10 signatures in each of the 5 counties. See McCarthy v Garrahy, 460 F Supp 1042.
Even the Pennsylvania county distribution requirement for primary petitions was held unconstitutional in Elliott v Shapp in 1979. So all the legislature did in response was to repeal primary petition distribution requirements for president and US Senate, but left it in place for state office.
The 1969 SCOTUS case is one of the very few that makes some sense about the EQUAL in the Equal Protection Clause.
Thank you yet again, Richard, for the information and the link. Notes:
* Still no party-qualifying petition process though, I guess.
* I see that the period for collecting signatures would be cut in half in future years, per Section 953(b):
“No nomination paper shall be circulated prior to the [tenth Wednesday prior] first Wednesday subsequent to the primary, and no signature shall be counted unless it bears a date affixed not earlier than the [tenth Wednesday prior] first Wednesday subsequent to the primary nor later than the [second Friday] seventh Wednesday subsequent to the primary.”
now: 12 weeks, 2 days (from 10th Wednesday before primary to 2nd Friday after primary)
after bill: 6 weeks (from 1st Wednesday after primary to 7th Wednesday after primary)
* Does the ban on distributional requirements apply only to counties? Michigan statute (MCL 168.53, 168.93) requires petitions for governor and US Senator to include at least 100 signatures from at least half of the state’s Congressional districts.
Looks like Moore v Ogilvie invalidated county-based distribution requirements because they treated all counties the same and thus weren’t one-person-one-vote . . . see, e.g., here:
https://ballotpedia.org/Moore_v._Ogilvie
In which case, distributional requirements based on Congressional districts should be okay as long as the districts themselves are legit.
The bill only lists seems to list requirements for the petitions for Governor to be allocated by county, not necessarily President or U.S. Senate. Am I reading that incorrectly?
UNEQUAL numbers of ACTUAL ELECTORS in ALL districts.
Too many MORON judges to count.
Actually the ceiling for President, vice president, and governor is 5,000, for all other statewide office it’s 2,500. The separate language for lieutenant governor seems unnecessary, as they’re elected as a ticket
The bill appears to make ballot access more difficult in the case of legislative candidates if it’s a signature requirement rather than a cap. I’d appreciate if Richard could clarify that, he’s better at reading these things than I.
What day will the courts bring down a HAMMER on the skulls of the robot party hacks when they ignore the USA Constitution ??? — i.e. the UNCONSTITUTIONAL spread signature requirements — now a mere 47 years ago.
Plaintiffs must demand $$$$ DAMAGES — to bankrupt ALL of the robot party hacks involved who enforce all such UN-constitutional laws — and even perhaps try to bankrupt the evil rotted governments involved.
Remember the about 400,000 Union Army/Navy (and early volunteers) DEAD in the Civil WAR whose deaths were the REAL price to get the 13th – 14th – 15th Amdts.