After almost three weeks of Pennsylvania state court proceedings in Philadelphia and Harrisburg, approximately 41,000 signatures on the Libertarian Pennsylvania statewide petition have been processed. There are still 8,500 unprocessed signatures.

“Processed” means that both sides have looked at each processed signature, and either both sides agree that the signature is valid, or both sides agree it isn’t valid, or the two sides disagree. Many of the disagreements hinge on certain unresolved legal issues, such as whether a petition signature is valid if the signer put the month and day in the “date” column, but not the year. The printed forms all says “Revised January 2012” at the bottom, so it is obvious that all the signatures were signed in 2012. But the challengers say those signatures aren’t valid.

“Processing” will be suspended while some of the legal issues are argued, which will be done on September 12. If the determination of various legal issues means that the unprocessed 8,500 signatures will determine whether the petition has enough valid signatures, then the “processing” will start again for those signatures. In the meantime Pennsylvania is one of the states that can’t start printing ballots. The legal requirement is 20,601 signatures.

The Kentucky Secretary of State’s office has already approved all three presidential petitions submitted earlier. Therefore, Kentucky will have five presidential candidates on its ballot, the nominees of the Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, and Green Parties, and independent candidate Randall Terry.

This is the first time the Green Party presidential nominee has been on in Kentucky since 2000. Thanks to Tamar Yager for this news.

On the afternoon of September 8, the New York Conservative Party met in Albany and nominated Mitt Romney for President. See the party’s web page announcement here.