On March 7, U.S. District Court Judge Lawerence Stengel, a Bush Jr. appointee, ruled that neither the Constitution Party, the Green Party, nor the Libertarian Party, has standing to challenge the unique Pennsylvania system that puts petitioning groups at risks of paying as much as $100,000 if they submit a petition that is determined to be invalid. Here is the 17-page opinion in Constitution Party v Aichele, eastern district, cv-12-2726.
The decision says nothing about the merits of the issue. It says the Green Party doesn’t have standing because its statewide 2012 petition was not challenged. It says the Libertarian Party doesn’t have standing because even though its statewide petition was challenged, after two months of grueling petition-checking, the party showed it did have enough valid signatures. And it says the Constitution Party doesn’t have standing because it voluntarily withdrew its 2012 statewide petition. Of course the reason the Constitution Party withdrew its petition was that it was afraid if the petition didn’t have enough valid signatures, the party would face ruinous costs.
The decision does not cite one ballot access precedent, except for Judge Stengel’s own precedent from a similar case filed on the same issue in a non-election year (he also said in that case that standing is lacking). The U.S. Supreme Court precedents on standing in ballot access cases make it abundantly clear that Judge Stengel is wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court has even struck down ballot access laws (or remanded the case back to a lower court) when the plaintiffs didn’t try to get on the ballot. This is true in the case of the Socialist Labor Party in Ohio in 1968, Gus Hall in California in 1972, and Eugene McCarthy in Texas in 1976. Also, in 1977 the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed a decision of a 3-judge court in Arkansas, striking down the April petition deadline, even though the plaintiff in that case hadn’t circulated a petition when he won the deadline case. If parties and candidates that didn’t even try to get on the ballot have standing, it is obvious that the Constitution Party has standing, because it did try.
Ironically, there is some reason to believe that if the Constitution Party had not withdrawn its petition, the petition would have been held valid, because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in September and October 2012 that signatures are valid if the signer had moved (within the county) and had not updated the voter registration record; and also that signatures are valid even if the signer forgot or didn’t know to show the year in the date column. But those decisions came after the party had already withdrawn the petition. The plaintiffs will appeal.