The Pennsylvania Attorney General has asked the 3rd circuit to extend his deadline for filing a response in Constitution Party v Cortes. Courts always grant these requests routinely, so the new deadline will be December 6. The issues are: (1) the unique Pennsylvania system of imposing court costs of up to $110,000 on people who submit a petition that is rejected for not having enough signatures; (2) the failure of many counties to count write-ins, even though in Pennsylvania all write-ins are valid votes: (3) the failure of the state to canvass the write-in vote for many bona fide candidates, such as Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney in 2008; (4) the state’s 15% registration membership test for a party to be on the ballot automatically.
The U.S. District Court had said none of the minor party plaintiffs, or the candidate plaintiffs, have standing to challenge any of these laws and practices.