The Pennylvania State Supreme Court today entered a one-sentence order, denying the Green Party an injunction to get on the statewide ballot this November. Pennsylvania thus joins New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Alabama, is one of 4 states this year which is holding a statewide partisan election and has no minor party or independent candidates on that statewide ballot.
The issue in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was how many signatures were actually required this year, 67,070 or 15,494. Romanelli’s attorney, Lawrence Otter, argued that state elections officials should have used a 2005 judicial retention election for Justice Sandra Newman, a move that would have resulted in a signature requirement of 15,494. The Green candidate had originally submitted nominating petitions, which he said, contained 100,000 signatures. After a review by state elections officials and litigation before Commonwealth Court, thousands of those signatures were ruled invalid, leaving him at least 9,000 short of the required total.
The best hope for Pennsylvania ballot access reform now lies with the rehearing pending in the 3rd circuit, which almost certainly won’t be decided until after the election. They also plan to appeal on other issues. In a separate appeal of the original Commonwealth Court ruling, Romanelli is challenging the validity of the overall statewide registration system and argues that his due process rights were denied as he tried to rehabilitate thousands of signatures ruled invalid in the painstaking review before the court. Of course, lobbying for a better law may work also; the Pennsylvania ballot access group has been very vigorous.
Not only does this ruling continue the tradition of missreading the law, it also reafirms an unreasonable standard that fluctuates irradically based on the highest vote in an unspecified election in the last year, or maybe two years. The pool of signers is held to currently registered voters who have kept their registration information up-to-date, who sign legibly using their full name, who provde their current address (as it is written on their registration), their political municipality (not their postal office town), and the current date, all written out by thier own hand with no ditto marks. Repeat 20,000, 30,000 or 67,000 times depending on the year and the stars.
Perhaps the fluctuations themselves could be found unconstitutional? In that making ballot access harder in 2006 (and odd-numbered years) but not in other even-numbered years represents no valid state interest?
The problem is that the Court is saying that a Retention vote for Supreme Court does not constitute an election under State law, thus all the “yes” & “no” votes on retention of a judge aren’t votes for a candidate. So, one needs to look at the highest vote count for Statewide “candidate” in the last “election”, which would be the 2004 Treasurer Race, won by Bob Casey – ironic, huh?