Pennsylvania Supreme Court Again Upholds Costs for Candidates Whose Petitions Are Rejected

Posted on by August 18, 2009
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On August 18, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court again upheld the unique Pennsylvania practice of charging candidates for the costs of removing them from the ballot. UPDATE: see this news story in the Wilkes-Barre newspaper. The Court issued a one-sentence order in the 2006 Green Party case, affirming that the Court’s prior opinion stands, and that the Green Party’s candidate for U.S. Senate in 2006 and his attorney must pay approximately $80,000 to the people who challenged their petition.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court did not issue any order in the parallel Nader case; it is still pending before them.

The refusal of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to ever have written a decision discussing the constitutional problems with the Pennsylvania system will perhaps bolster the pending federal court case against that system, which is pending in the eastern district. That case is called Constitution Party of Pennsylvania et al v Cortes.

First Brief Filed in Georgia Ballot Access Case

Posted on by August 18, 2009
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On August 17, Faye Coffield filed her first brief in the 11th circuit, in Coffield v Handel, 09-13277, the case challenging the 5% (of the number of registered voters) petition requirement for minor party and independent candidates for U.S. House. As the brief makes abundantly clear, no one has completed this petition since 1964, and back in 1964, the petition was due in October of the election year and the signatures were presumed to be valid. Here is the brief.

The lower court had upheld the law on the basis that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld the 5% petition in Jenness v Fortson in 1971. However, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971 had depended on the fact that the statewide petition had been successfully used in 1966 and 1968. The evidence shows that statewide petitions are easier to circulate than district petitions, because so many signatures for district petitions are always invalidated because the signer is a registered voter but lives in the wrong district. Statewide petitions don’t have that difficulty.

Florida Lawsuit Tests New Method of Gathering Signatures for Multiple Petitions

Posted on by August 18, 2009
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On July 30, a lawsuit was filed in Florida state court to test the idea of having three petitions signed simultaneously with the use of colored-code carbon-paper petition forms. A group sponsoring six city initiatives in Daytona Beach circulated its petitions in two groups of three each. To save time, voters were invited to sign each of the two packets. Each packet included three initiatives. The signature of each voter was automatically recorded on each of three petitions.

Of course, if a voter only wanted to sign one for one initiative, the circulator invited him or her to simply separate the forms, and sign only one form.

The group sponsoring the six initiatives filed its lawsuit, Striving Towards a New Daytona v City of Daytona Beach, in Volusia County Circuit Court, no. 2009-33119, because it fears that the city will reject its petitions because of the carbon-paper idea.

In 2008, the Alabama campaigns of Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin, talked about applying this same 3-petition carbon-copy package to make it easier for each of the three to quickly gather the needed 5,000 signatures, but the idea was not implemented.

New York Omits Candidate From Absentee Ballots Even Though Court Put Him On Ballot

Posted on by August 17, 2009
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According to this story in the New York Daily News, the New York City Board of Elections has printed absentee ballots in City Councilman Alan Gerson’s race that do not include Gerson’s name. This, despite the fact that last week the New York Supreme Court ordered him restored to the ballot. This is not a mistake; the New York City Board of Elections says it is policy.

That policy violates what the U.S. Supreme Court said in American Party of Texas v White. That 1974 decision upheld many Texas state ballot access laws, but the one victorious point in that case was that the U.S. Supreme Court said it violates the U.S. Constitution to omit a candidate (who is on the regular ballots) from absentee ballots. This part of the decision is on pages 794-795 in U.S. Reports. Thanks to Kimberly Wilder for the link.