The Pennsylvania ban on out-of-state circulators for general election petitions has already been struck down. Trent Pool, a professional petitioner who lives in Texas, has his own lawsuit, trying to strike down the Pennsylvania ban for primary petitions. All the briefs have been filed as of January 26, 2017. The case is Benezet Consulting v Cortes, 1:16cv-74.

The state is trying to defend its ban by saying it is only protecting the interests of the two parties that hold primaries in Pennsylvania, the Republican and Democratic Parties. But Pool counters that by showing that the major parties have no bylaws banning out-of-state circulators from circulating primary petitions, nor have they intervened in this lawsuit. Furthermore, as Pool points out, he is a member of the Texas Republican Party, and therefore it is nonsense for the state to claim that if he had been allowed last year to circulate a petition to get Rand Paul on the Republican presidential primary ballot, he would have been “raiding” the Republican Party.