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.

Kathleen Curry, Colorado’s only independent legislator, has conceded the election.  She appears to have received 9,368 write-ins, but her Democratic opponent (who was, of course, listed on the ballot) received 9,660.  See this story.

Texas legislators are already introducing bills for the 2011 legislative session.  Representative Leo Berman recently introduced HB 295, which says that no presidential or vice-presidential candidate may be listed on the November ballot unless he or she has presented an “original birth certificate indicating that the person is a natural-born United States citizen.”

The bill has no effect on presidential primaries, or on write-in candidates.  The bill seems not to acknowledge that not every person born in the United States has a birth certificate.  Nor does the bill define “original birth certificate.”  The new language proposed by the bill is only one sentence long.  Thanks to Political Wire for this news.