On May 19, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Stengel issued a five-page order, saying only the Third Circuit can decide whether to put the Constitution, Green, and Libertarian Parties on the Pennsylvania ballot. This is because the basis for any such order depends on what the Third Circuit thinks about the underlying issue in the original case. The order is dated May 18 but it wasn’t released until May 19.

On May 19, the parties filed an Emergency Motion with the Third Circuit, asking that they be put on the ballot. The case is Constitution Party of Pennsylvania v Cortes.

Ross Douthat, the youngest regular New York Times columnist on politics, and a conservative, here laments that Mitt Romney didn’t decide to run as an independent presidential candidate this year.

The Alaska Democratic Party had its state convention May 14-15. It did not change its bylaws to say that independent candidates may file to run in Democratic primaries. Earlier the party had been so keen to make this change, it had filed a lawsuit against the state, to strike down the law that says only party members may run in Democratic primaries. But the state court ruled that the party didn’t have standing, since technically it still didn’t have any bylaws approving the idea.

It had been thought that the recent state convention might remedy that flaw in the lawsuit, so that the lawsuit could be re-filed. But instead, the convention took no action.