According to this story, another Indiana resident has now pleaded guilty in the 2008 incident in which signatures on petitions to get Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Indiana presidential primary ballot were forged. This second individual who has confessed guilt was the Democratic Party’s representative in the St. Joseph County voter registration office. A trial against two other individuals will start next month.

The fraud occurred because it is so difficult to get candidates on the Indiana presidential primary ballot. Even the campaigns of Obama and Clinton felt it necessary to forge signatures, rather than to fulfill the requirements. Indiana’s presidential primary ballot access is the most difficult of any state, for candidates who are recognized by the national news media. And Indiana’s ballot access requirements for independent and newly-qualifying parties are even worse than the presidential primary requirements. It is possible that publicity about the 2008 petition fraud might cause some Indiana legislator to introduce a bill to ease the ballot access requirements next year. Unfortunately, it is already too late for bills to be introduced in Indiana this year. There are many states with ballot access that is too strict, but Indiana is unique among these states, in that no legislator has introduced a bill to ease them, in recent decades. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.

Walter Patton, an independent candidate for Mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, doesn’t know yet if his name will be on November ballot. He got the needed 50 valid signatures, but after he submitted them, some of the signers say they want to remove their names. Most states, including Mississippi, have no procedure for signers to remove their names after the petition has been submitted. See this story.

In the absence of a statutory provision covering withdrawal of signatures, it seems inappropriate to let signers withdraw their signatures after the petition has been submitted. If that were allowed generally, opponents of any petition (whether a candidate petition or a petition for a ballot measure or a recall petition) could sign petitions insincerely, and then demand that their names be removed. That would violate due process for the petitioning groups, because they could never know if they had enough signatures before it was too late.

The Mayor of Rockford, Illinois, hopes to place a ballot measure on the ballot next year asking if the city should switch from partisan city elections to non-partisan city elections. See this story. Rockford is the most populous city in Illinois that uses partisan city elections. The only two cities in Illinois that are more populous, Chicago and Aurora, use non-partisan elections.