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.

On October 9, the Ohio Secretary of State asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a recent order by the 6th circuit, that required the state to permit early voting the weekend before the election. The basis for the 6th circuit opinion (as well as the U.S. District Court opinion, which agreed with the 6th circuit) was that Ohio permits members of the military who are in this country to vote early on that weekend. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.

On October 7, Public Policy Polling released a presidential poll for Virginia that asked respondents about all five candidates who are listed on the ballot. The results: President Obama 48%, Mitt Romoney 44%, Gary Johnson 4%, Virgil Goode 1%, Jill Stein under one-half of 1%, undecided 2%. Thanks to William Fenwick for this news.