The U.S. Supreme Court has put Citizens for Police Accountability v Browning, 09-861, on its April 16, 2010 conference. The decision on whether the court will hear the case will not be released until April 19 at the earliest. Sometimes the court mulls over whether to take a case, and then postpones making a quick decision and sets it for another conference.

This is the case from Florida, over whether it is constitutional for a state to let exit pollsters stand within 25 feet of a polling place location, but which won’t let petitioners stand within 100 feet. Both groups only wish to speak to voters on their way out of the polling place.

Late last year, William D. Johnson and others announced the formation of a new political party, called the American Third Position. It has filed for status as a political body in California, but otherwise does not seem to have carried out any ballot access work.

The party’s web page is here. The program says, “We will stop all immigration into America, except in special cases.” The party’s logo includes the figure of Charles Lindbergh.

In Pennsylvania, candidates seeking a place on a partisan primary ballot must submit petitions. The Pennsylvania primary this year is May 18. In Pennsylvania, elections officials assume that all petitions that contain, on their face, at least many signatures as are legally required, are valid.

However, any private individual who is a member of the same party may challenge any candidate’s primary ballot petition. The Democratic Party petition for one candidate for State Representative, 175th district, has been challenged. The challenged candidate is Daryl LaFountain. LaFountain has just learned that the challenge to his petition was submitted by fax, and that the fax machine used is the state government-owned fax machine in the district office of the incumbent. The incumbent, Representative Michael O’Brien, is running for re-election. On March 29, LaFountain’s attorney filed a motion with the court that is hearing the challenge to LaFountain’s petition. The motion asks that the challenge be dismissed because the objector is using state government resources for the challenge. It will be interesting to see what happens next. The formal name of the challenge in court is: In re The Nomination Petitions and Papers of Daryl La Fountain, 235 MD 2010.