On June 24, the three Pennsylvania parties who are suing over Pennsylvania ballot access sent this letter to the judge, pointing out constitutional problems with the new ballot access bill that passed the Senate on Friday, June 24. The letter has already been seen by attorneys for the state, and probably the bill will be amended in a favorable manner.
CNN has learned the names of the members of the national Republican Rules Committee for the upcoming convention. CNN reports that these members are overwhelmingly not people who want to change the rules to make it more difficult for Donald Trump to become the party’s presidential nominee.
Francis Scarpaleggia is head of the Canadian government’s national commission to study alternative voting systems. He is also chair of the national Liberal Party caucus. According to his web page, he seems favorable to proportional representation. He writes that the goal of the commission is to create a system “so that the distribution of seats in the House of Commons better reflects each party’s share of the popular vote.”
On June 24, the Libertarian National Committee and the Kentucky Libertarian Party filed this amicus brief, in the pending Sixth Circuit Ohio Libertarian ballot access case. The amicus devotes the first section to clearly explaining that officials of Ohio state government actively and closely coordinated with the Republican Party of Ohio and the John Kasich re-election campaign, to keep the Ohio Libertarian candidate for Governor off the primary ballot. The next section focuses on a constitutional infirmity of the 2013 ballot access law. It requires new parties to meet the vote test at the first opportunity. But old parties have two elections to meet the vote test. The Sixth Circuit already ruled that is unconstitutional, in the Tennessee Green Party case.
The Pennsylvania House cannot vote on the ballot access bill, HB 342, until late Monday morning, June 27. The House is not sitting on Friday, June 24, nor is it sitting on the weekend.
