On Friday, November 13, an Assistant Attorney General for Tennessee conducted depositions of the former or current state chairs of the Tennessee Libertarian, Constitution, and Green Parties, in that time order. Together the three depositions lasted over 7 hours. This is in the lawsuit that challenges the means by which new or previously unqualified parties get themselves on the ballot in Tennessee, called Libertarian Party of Tennessee et al v Thompson, 3:08-cv-63.

To a certain extent, of course, the state was trying to gather some sort of evidence that would show that any or all three of the plaintiff political parties are not substantial, or that they haven’t really tried to use the existing procedures. No petition for a new party in Tennessee has succeeded since George Wallace qualified the American Party in 1968. Even the Reform Party tried to qualify as a party in Tennessee, but never succeeded. Tennessee is the only state in which the Reform Party ever tried to qualify as a party and never succeeded. All minor party candidates who have appeared on the Tennessee ballot since 1973 have used the independent candidate petition procedure, which only requires 25 signatures (except that independent presidential candidates need 275 signatures).

Pennsylvania’s statewide minor party and independent candidate petition will be 19,056 signatures. The legal requirement is 2% of the highest vote-getting statewide candidate’s vote in the November 3, 2009 partisan judicial election. Pennsylvania election returns are now complete, and the highest vote-getting candidate was Judy Olson, a Republican running for Superior Court. She got 952,760 votes. 2% of that equals 19,056. UPDATE: on December 1, the state finished a recount, so the final figure is 2% of 954,065, which is 19,082 signatures.

This is the lowest petition requirement for Pennsylvania minor party and independent candidates since 1971, when the legislature quadrupled the requirement from one-half of 1% to 2%. The 2008 requirement was 24,666. The 2006 requirement was 67,070, far higher than usual because there had been no statewide judicial election in 2005 so the formula was applied to the 2004 election, when turnout is far higher. The 2004 requirement was 25,697.

If the 2008 requirement had only been 19,056, it is virtually certain that the Constitution Party would have qualified in 2008. It collected slightly over 20,000 signatures in 2008. As it was, the only statewide petitions that succeeded in 2008 were the Nader independent petition and the Libertarian Party statewide petition.

The reason the 2010 requirement will be so low is that the voter turnout on November 3, 2009, was quite low.

On November 13, the state said there will be a recount for Superior Court Judge. Four were to be elected, from a field of nine candidates (four Republicans, four Democrats, and one Libertarian). It is obvious that three of the Republicans were elected. But for the fourth seat, the highest vote-getter for the Democrats had slightly more votes than the lowest vote-getter for the Republicans. The highest Democrat got 725,798 votes and the lowest Republican got 722,264. Presumably the recount will only recount the vote for those two particular candidates, and not all the candidates in that race.

On November 13, Pennsylvania state house member John Perzel surrendered to law enforcement authorities. He is charged with using taxpayer resources for Republican Party campaign work. See this story. He was the Speaker of the House of Representatives 2003-2007, and is the Speaker Emeritus. He was re-elected in November 2008 in a two-party race, polling 65.7% of the vote against a Democrat. Also surrendering were nine political associates of Perzel, including some employees of the legislature.