On July 30, Harry F. Byrd, Jr., died at the age of 98. He was elected to the U.S. Senate from Virginia in 1970 and again in 1976 as an independent. Until Angus King’s victory in Maine in 2012, he had been the only independent ever elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote who got a majority of the vote, even though both major parties had a nominee against him. See this story.

Before 1970, he had previously been elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat. He ran as an independent in 1970 because the Virginia Democratic Party was requiring its nominees to take an oath to support the Democratic 1972 presidential nominee. Byrd was not willing to take an oath to support someone when that person had not even yet been chosen.

The Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition, which has been working for several years to improve ballot access for minor party and independent candidates, is focusing on persuading State Senator Lloyd Smucker (R-Lancaster) to hold hearings on the ballot access bill, SB 195, by Senator Mike Folmer. The bill has enough support on the Senate State Government Committee that it is plausible it would pass that committee, if only Senator Smucker will hear the bill. Smucker is the chairman of that committee.

Pennsylvania and California are virtually the only states in which the legislatures are still in session, and which ballot access improvement bills are pending. Legislatures in almost all states have gone home for the year.

The Fourth Circuit had tentatively set the oral argument date in Pisano v Strach, 13-1368, for the period October 29-November 1. This is the case that challenges the May petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties to submit their 90,000 valid signatures. The U.S. District Court had refused to allow the plaintiffs to engage in discovery to see if the state really has any valid interest in this deadline. The U.S. District Court had dismissed the case with a short opinion, which seemed to combine an attitude that the plaintiffs don’t have standing, and a blanket assertion that any state ballot access regulation is automatically constitutional.

Back in 1988, the North Carolina State Board of Elections was so convinced that the May deadline was unconstitutional, it waived the deadline and let the New Alliance Party submit its petition in July. Newly-qualifying parties in North Carolina nominate by convention, so there is no reason to have the deadline as early as May. In the past, the North Carolina petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties was in August. It was moved to July in 1949, and to May in 1979.