On October 10, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that signatures on petitions are valid even if the signer forgot, or didn’t know, to include “2012” in the date column. This decision reverses the 2-1 decision of the Commonwealth Court.

This decision has no effect for the Libertarian Party statewide petition, which had already been shown to be valid. But it will be of help in future years. Furthermore, it is conceivable that if the Constitution Party had not withdrawn its statewide petition this year, given this decision, it might also have had enough valid signatures. Thanks to Larry Otter for this news. The Supreme Court decision mentions “common sense” in its decision. The petition forms all say “Revised 1/2012” at the bottom.

On October 10, a lower state court in New Jersey enjoined restrictions on residency for circulators of local petitions. As a result, circulators are free to work on local recall petitions, and on petitions for independent candidates in partisan local elections, whether they live in the locality or not. Empower Our Neighborhood v Guadagno, Mercer County, L-3148-11. Thanks to Flavio Komuves for this news. Here is the decision.

On October 10, the Commonwealth Court Judge in Pennsylvania who is handling the challenge to the statewide Libertarian Party petition ruled that the Republicans cannot seek to re-open the challenge process. The Republican challengers had attempted to persuade the judge to give them another chance to invalidate certain signatures they had already agreed are valid. As a result, the Libertarian Party statewide petition is valid. The State Supreme Court will probably now take a slow approach to deciding whether signatures are valid if the signer forgot, or didn’t know, to add “2012” to the date column; and likewise take a slow approach to deciding if signatures are valid if the signer moved within the county and failed to re-register. These two issues are now moot. Nevertheless, the State Supreme Court will almost certainly decide them, for the sake of future disputes. Sometimes these cases take a year or more to decide when there is no immediate time pressure to decide them more quickly.