James Island, South Carolina, held town elections on August 3.  Bill Woolsey, a member of the Libertarian Party, won the non-partisan Mayoral election.  He is an economics professor at the Citadel, and he had also been elected to the town council in 2002.

The election of Woolsey was a surprise.  Five candidates were on the ballot.  Woolsey polled 39.7%.  The incumbent Mayor placed second with 19.9%.  The Mayor had been so confident of being re-elected, she had not even bothered to attend a candidate’s debate, although all four of her opponents participated in that debate, and the debate drew a large audience.  Thanks to Eugene Platt for this news.

An earlier blog post today said that a challenge had been filed to the statewide petition of the Pennsylvania Green Party.  Since then, the Libertarian and Tea Party statewide petitions have also been challenged.  See this story.

Tolerance for minor party and independent candidate election activity in Pennsylvania has drastically declined during the last 70 years.  After 1938, and until 2004, no minor party or independent candidate statewide petition was ever challenged in Pennsylvania.  But starting in 2004, such challenges have been filed every even-numbered election year in that state.  A challenge to Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr was defeated in 2008, but challenges succeeded against Ralph Nader in 2004, and the Green Party statewide slate in 2006.

On August 9, someone challenged the statewide Green Party petition in Pennsylvania.  The challenge was made only 90 minutes before the 5 p.m. deadline to file challenges.  So far no one has challenged the statewide petitions of the Libertarian Party, or of the Tea Party.

The Green Party statewide petition only has a nominee for U.S. Senate.  Pennsylvania Greens did not enter the race for Governor/Lieutenant Governor this year.

The challenge to the Green Party petition, although unfortunate, will make it extremely likely that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit Constitution Party v Cortes will be able to overturn the April 15 decision of a U.S. District Court that said the plaintiff political parties  (including the Pennsylvania Green Party) don’t have standing to sue over the Pennsylvania challenge system.  Also, if the 2010 challenge against the Green Party succeeds, and the Greens then launch a write-in candidate for their Senate nominee, Mel Packer, then the Green Party will also have standing in the part of the case that complains about the state’s failure to tally write-ins for most write-in candidates, and the failure of certain counties to count write-in votes.