On January 6, seven more employees of the Pennsylvania legislature pleaded guilty to doing partisan campaign work with state resources. See this story. The partisan campaign work included many types of activity, including work against the Green Party’s statewide petition in 2006 and Ralph Nader’s 2004 petition. In Pennsylvania, all petitions are deemed to be valid if the petition has more than the required number of signatures. However, any individual may challenge a petition. No statewide minor party or independent petition had been challenged in Pennsylvania since 1938, until 2004. Such challenges are a great deal of work for the challenge. The challenges undoubtably would not have occurred if the challengers had not had the benefit of state government resources.

Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, a Democrat, has filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd circuit. Her brief urges the 2nd circuit to reverse the U.S. District Court in the case over the discriminatory aspects of Connecticut’s public funding law for candidates for state office. See her press release, which is moderately lengthy yet which fails to describe why the law was struck down last year.

The hearing in the 2nd circuit is on January 13. Bysiewicz is expected to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor this year.

On the evening of January 5, the Oakland, California, City Council voted 6-2 to use Instant Runoff Voting for this year’s city elections. Instead of the old system, a June first round with a November run-off when no one got 50%, the 2010 election will be entirely in November. See this story.