The Constitution Party of Illinois expects to file a lawsuit on September 1 to get its statewide slate of candidates on the Illinois ballot.  Illinois requires 25,000 valid signatures.  After employees of the State Board of Elections checked each signature, they found 25,017 valid signatures.  But then members of the Board reduced the valid number to 22,000.  They did this by presuming that certain signatures must be forged, because the signature on the petition does not resemble the signature on the voter registration form.

The party says that is because some voters have not signed a voter registration form in decades, and as these voters have aged, the appearance of their signature has changed.

When the Board found a signature it believed had been forged, it then disqualified all the signatures on the same sheet.  This is the same reasoning that led the Board to disqualify the statewide Libertarian slate in 1998.  See this story.  Thanks to Jeff Trigg for the link.

This news story reveals that the West Virginia Secretary of State tallies the number of registrants in all parties now, even the unqualified ones.  The Libertarian Party has 1,300 registered members, even though it was only a ballot-qualified party during the period November 1996 through November 2000.  The Constitution Party has 99 registered members, counting the obvious misspellings of “Constitution.”  Thanks to Jeff Becker for the link.

The Alaska Libertarian Party executive committee held a press conference on Monday to say that even though the party hasn’t been asked by U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski to nominate her (if she loses the Republican primary), that even if the party is asked, it will decline.  See this story.  For a more detailed account, see this account from www.libertarianrepublican.net.