Ohio is holding primaries this year for six political parties, including the Constitution, Green, Libertarian and Socialist Parties. Candidates in those primaries need 25 signatures to get on the primary ballot. Ty Collinsworth is a college student trying to run in the Green Party primary for state Representative in the 92nd district, in Athens. A Democrat has filed a challenge to Collinsworth’s petition. See this story, from the Jesse Hathaway blog.

The story says that members of one party do not have the legal right to file a petition challenge in the primary of another party. The story also says that the challenger identified himself as a Democrat when he filled out an application to vote absentee in the 2008 primary. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.

Morgan Bruce Reeves, an independent candidate for Governor of South Carolina, says he has collected the needed 10,000 valid signatures to be on the ballot this year. Assuming he gets on, and also assuming that independent gubernatorial candidate Joe Schwarz gets on in Michigan, after 2010, there will be only six states in which an independent gubernatorial candidate has never been on a government-printed ballot. They will be Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Montana, New Mexico, and North Carolina.

Reeves played football for the Baltimore Colts, and is CEO of a construction company. See this story. There is a campaign website, www.reevesforgovernor.com, but it doesn’t seem to be up at the moment this blog post is being written.

Carl Romanelli, the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in 2006, has this op-ed in the Citizens Voice of March 6. The Citizens Voice is the daily newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylania. The op-ed points out that U.S. Senator Robert Casey of Pennsylvania has criticized Iran for violating free and fair elections, but that Pennsylvania election procedures are also lacking.