On August 20, two Republicans filed lawsuits against Kentucky elections officials, and two minor party congressional candidates, alleging that the ballot access petitions for the two candidates don’t really have enough valid signatures.  The two plaintiffs are David Caldwell, who says he is a Republican voter, and Cordell Lawrence, vice-chair of the Jefferson County Republican Party.

The two candidates are Edward A. Martin, a Libertarian; and Michael Hansen, a member of the Constitution Party who is using the ballot label “independent.”  They are both running for U.S. House in the 3rd district.  They are the only two minor party or independent candidates for Congress in Kentucky this year.  Kentucky is one of five states with no statewide minor party or independent candidates (the only statewide race is U.S. Senate).

One of the cases is Caldwell v Martin, 10-ci-05867, in Jefferson Circuit Court.  The case will be heard August 30.

The U.S. Court of Appeals, 3rd circuit, has set out a briefing schedule for Constitution Party, et al v Cortes, 10-3205.  The opening brief is due October 19.  This is the case that challenges the Pennsylvania system of charging candidates huge fees if they submit a petition that is insufficient.  It also challenges the 15% registration threshold for a party to be on the ballot automatically, and the failure of many counties to count write-in votes, and the failure of the state Elections Department to tally the write-ins that do get counted.

The U.S. District Court had ruled that the case is not ripe and that the plaintiffs do not have standing, a finding that is ludicrous, given what has happened this month to all the statewide minor party petitions.

The 3rd circuit had originally proposed an even earlier briefing schedule, but the attorney for the minor parties had to ask for more time, because of the press of other election law litigation he is doing.

On August 25, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner asked election officials in Mahoning County to do a thorough review of how many votes were cast for for Governor in November 2006, inside the part of that county that is in the 17th U.S. House district.  See this story.  The purpose of the review is to determine if former Congressman Jim Traficant has enough valid signatures on his independent candidate petition for U.S. House this year.

Ohio law says an independent candidate for U.S. House needs signatures of 1% of the last vote cast inside that district, for Governor.  If Ohio law said the petition for U.S. House needs signatures of 1% of the last vote cast for that same office, the job of knowing how many signatures are needed would be far, far easier.  Better yet would be a simple law that says an independent for U.S. House needs 1,000 signatures.