The Egyptian Committee that has been suggesting new constitutional amendments has proposed changes in ballot access for presidential candidates. The suggestion is that a presidential candidate qualify for ballot access if he or she submits 30,000 signatures, with a certain number obtained from each of 15 provinces. Egypt has 29 provinces. Alternatively, a candidate can qualify if he or she is endorsed by at least 30 members of either house of the national legislature. A third method is that if a party has at least one member of the national parliament, it can place a presidential nominee on the ballot with no petition. See this story.

Egypt has an estimated population of 77,119,000.

On February 25, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Commissions, Elections & Legislation released the write-in results from the November 2, 2010 election. However, the information does not seem to be on the Bureau’s web page yet. It appears that eight counties did not tally any write-ins at all for any office. They are Clarion, Clinton, Jefferson, Lawrence, Mifflin, Montgomery, Perry, and Philadelphia.

Pennsylvania is the only large state that has no procedure for write-in candidates who want their vote tallied to file a declaration of write-in candidacy. All write-in votes are valid votes in Pennsylvania, and the state admits that the law requires that all write-ins be counted. The Pennsylvania Constitution protects write-in votes. In 1905, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said, “Unless there was such provision to enable the voter not satisfied to vote any ticket on the ballot, or for any names appearing on it, to make up an entire ticket of his own choice, the election as to him would not be equal, for he would not be able to express his own individual will in his own way.” Oughton v Black, 61 A. 346, at page 348.

A U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Washington, will conduct a trial in Doe v Reed starting on September 27, 2011. This the case filed in July 2009 over whether people who signed one particular referendum petition are entitled to keep their names and addresses from being made public. The U.S. District Court had ruled that the First Amendment protects privacy for petition signers, but the 9th circuit had reversed. Then, on June 24, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued an opinion saying that there is no such privacy right in general, but that if the proponents can show that there is a reasonable chance that they would be harassed, then they are entitled to privacy.

Thus, the trial will be to determine whether the signers of this one particular referendum petition qualify for privacy. The subject of this particular referendum was whether or not to rescind a bill passed by the Washington state legislature for civil unions for same-sex couples. The referendum was held in 2009 and the voters upheld the civil unions law.

In a sense, the people who filed the lawsuit have already partially won, because while the case is pending, their names and addresses continue to be withheld. As time passes, fewer and fewer people will even remember or care who signed the petition.