On June 4, the New Hampshire Secretary of State agreed to accept 276 signatures on petitions for the 2010 Libertarian Party statewide candidate petition that had been collected in 2009.

In 2009, the legislature had set a start date of January 1 of any election year, for candidate petitions. However, the Libertarian Party had already collected 276 signatures in 2009 when the bill was signed. For months now, the party has been trying to persuade the Secretary of State that it violates due process to refuse to accept signatures that, when they were collected, were legal. Thanks to Ken Blevens for this news. Blevens has been tireless, working for this outcome. The statewide petition needs 3,000 signatures and is due on August 4.

On June 3, the Libertarian Party sued the Virginia State Board of Elections over that state’s rigid rules on residency of petition circulators. No one may circulate a petition to get a candidate on the ballot for a district office, unless that circulator lives in that district. The case is Libertarian Party of Virginia v Virginia State Board of Elections, filed in U.S. District Court, Alexandria, 1:10-cv-615.

There are lawsuits on this issue now pending in California, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska, although Kansas has informally indicated that it will concede the issue. The recent Idaho case won on April 9, 2010, is now over, because the state did not appeal. Lawsuits on this issue have also won in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania, in the last ten years.

The Ohio legislature is about to go on recess, probably for several months. The legislature still hasn’t passed any bill to replace the old, unconstitutional ballot access law. The decision striking down the old law was in September 2006, so it will have been almost four years that Ohio has been without a valid law.

Ballot access improvements are contained in HB 260 and SB 8, which are very lengthy bills that deal with many election law issues. Those bills are hundreds of pages long, and many people have worked very hard to write those bills, but the consensus is that no such bill will make any headway until after the November 2010 election.