The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has this story about the order of a U.S. District Court of June 30, setting the statewide petition requirement in Pennsylvania this year at exactly 5,000. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has this story.
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June 30 was the New Mexico deadline for petitions for party status. Two groups submitted petitions on the deadline. Those two petitions haven’t been checked yet. They are American Delta Party (supporting Rocky De La Fuente) and Better America Party (supporting the effort to find a mainstream conservative).
Parties already certified are the six parties that were on in 2014 (Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and Independent American) and the Party for Socialism & Liberation, which submitted earlier this year.
Austria held a presidential election run-off on May 22. On July 1, the highest court said there were flaws in the election process, and the election must be run again, probably in September or October. See this story, which says this appears to be the first time any election to choose a head of state, or head of government, has been re-done. However, commentor Bob Richard says a similar result occurred in Ukraine in 2004.
The Sri Lanka Guardian has this article by Mo Zhixu, on how China is able to squelch opposition to the ruling party, even in local elections. In China, in theory, voters can cast write-in candidates in local elections, and occasionally are able to nominate independent candidates.
As noted below, on June 30, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Stengel imposed a county distribution requirement for Pennsylvania statewide minor party and independent candidate petitions. No other state has county distribution requirements for statewide candidate or party petitions, because they violate “one person, one vote.”
The Fifth U.S. House district of Pennsylvania has all or part of 15 counties. Thus, the voters of the 15th district have the power to place a statewide candidate on the ballot, all by themselves. By contrast, the people of Philadelphia, which has enough people to be entitled to two entire U.S. House districts and part of a third, cannot place a statewide candidate on the ballot all by themselves, because to do that takes voters from 10 counties (for some offices).
Thus, Judge Stengel’s order gives more political power to the people of the 5th district, relative to the people of Philadelphia, even though Philadelphia is much more populous. This is a theoretical point but a very significant point. Judge Stengel has undermined the principle that is responsible for the redistricting revolution of the 1960’s, which ended favoritism for sparsely-populated areas in districting.