As noted earlier, on May 17, the Constitution Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party had filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia against the unique Pennsylvania system that requires petitioning candidates and groups to be subject to as much as $100,000 in court costs, if their petitions are held to lack enough valid signatures. That case is Constitution Party of Pennsylvania v Aichele, 5:12-cv-2726.

The state has just asked for, and obtained, a 30-day extension to answer the complaint. The state’s answer is now due July 25.

On June 19, the California Senate Elections Committee passed AB 1436, the bill to permit individuals to register to vote on election day. See this story. Assuming it is signed into law, it won’t be in effect until 2015 at the earliest. By then there will be a means for polling place officials to check the state voter registration database to guarantee that the new voter isn’t already registered somewhere else.

The Senate committee also passed AB 2058, to make it illegal for registration workers to be paid “directly or indirectly” on a per-registration card basis. The vote was 3-2. The bill’s author, Assemblymember Richard Pan, said he will consider amending it later to ease the definition of “political party”. Representatives of the Peace & Freedom Party, and the Libertarian Party, testified that it is not fair to make it more difficult for parties to gain more registrations, and at virtually the same time eliminate them from the ballot unless they have approximately 105,000 registered members (Proposition 14, the top-two open primary, caused that problem).

The Senate Elections Committee also passed AB 2410, which says that persons convicted of certain types of felony may not run for public office. However, the bill was amended to apply only to state and local office; the bill no longer relates to federal office.

Also on June 19, the Assembly Elections Committee passed SB 1272, which says county central committee member elections are for four-year terms, not two-year terms. Candidates for this office will only run in presidential election years, at the primary. The Peace & Freedom Party and the Green Party persuaded the author of the bill to amend the bill, to provide that each state political party will decide for itself who is eligible to run for this office. The bill also expands the petitioning period for candidates to get on the primary ballot for this office.

The Assembly Elections Committee did not hear ACA 10, the measure to make it more difficult for initiatives (to change the California Constitution) to get on the ballot. That bill will probably be heard July 3.