The August 2 issue of the Hartford Courant has this op-ed, criticizing Connecticut’s discriminatory public funding, and also criticizing the 2nd circuit’s ruling last month upholding that part of the law.
1
On August 2, a statewide petition for Pennsylvania governor was filed by the Tea Party. The candidate for Governor is John Krupa, who had earlier expected to be the Constitution Party candidate for Governor. The Constitution Party did not feel it had enough funding to complete its own petition. But then a Tea Party group contacted Krupa and asked him to be its gubernatorial candidate, and he accepted.
The petition has approximately 24,000 signatures. The requirement is 19,056.
On July 29, the last brief was filed in the 9th circuit in the Montana ballot access case Kelly v McCulloch, 10-35174. The case challenges the March petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates, especially in the context of the high number of signatures Montana requires, 5% of the winning candidate’s vote. Ironically Montana requires more than twice as many signatures for a non-presidential statewide independent as for a new ballot-qualified party.
On August 2, the Pennsylvania petition deadline, the Libertarian statewide candidates submitted approximately 24,000 signatures. The Green statewide candidates submitted approximately 19,400 signatures. The requirement is 19,082. State elections officials have accepted the petitions, but anyone is free to challenge either petition.
The Libertarians believe their validity rate is high, because so many of the signatures were collected either at the polls on primary election day May 18, or collected door-to-door.
On July 30, U.S. House member David Price introduced HR 6061, to make changes in the presidential public funding program. Primary season matching funds would become considerably more difficult to obtain. Current law requires that a presidential candidate receive $5,000 from each of 20 states. The bill would change that to $25,000 from each of 20 states.
The bill would also allow the payment of primary season matching funds to be made six months before the first presidential primary or caucus, which would mean August of the odd year before the election. Current law does not permit the payments until January of the election year.
The bill would eliminate public funds to pay for the presidential conventions of any party. But it would also allow individuals to contribute up to $25,000 to a political party, to help that party pay for its national convention. That contribution would be exempted from current limits on how much individuals may contribute to national political committees of nationally-organized political parties.
A companion bill, S.3681, has been introduced in the Senate by Senator Russ Feingold.