Ever since 2004, Massachusetts law has provided that Governors may not fill a vacancy in a U.S. Senate seat. Instead, the seat must remain empty until a special election is held. That election must be approximately five months after the vacancy had been created.

In January 2009, Massachusetts State House member Robert Koczera introduced HB 656, to permit the Governor to fill the vacancy immediately, although the state would still hold a special election approximately five months later. The bill had been set for a legislative hearing in October 2009, but the legislature may expedite that hearing, given the recent vacancy created by the death of Senator Ted Kennedy.

On August 24, the Pennsylvania Attorney General responded to the lawsuit Constitution Party of Pennsylvania v Cortes, which was filed in federal court in Philadelphia on April 21, 2009. Here is the state’s brief.

The state completely ignores the part of the lawsuit that challenges the 15% registration membership for a party to be on the general election ballot automatically. The state also completely ignores the point raised by the Green Party, which is that although the state tallied the write-ins for Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party nominee for president in 2008), it did not do so for Cynthia McKinney (Green Party nominee for president in 2008). This, despite the fact that McKinney filed a list of presidential elector candidates and asked that her write-ins be tallied.

As to the point that certain counties failed to tally any write-ins at all, the state simply says the plaintiffs should sue those counties, not the state.

As to the most important point in the lawsuit, that the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from charging candidates and/or voters for the costs of election administration, the state does not mention any of the precedents on which the plaintiffs rely, such as cases striking down fees for checking signatures, or cases striking down mandatory filing fees for candidates, or the U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down poll taxes for voters.

On August 25, the Libertarian and Green Parties of New Mexico asked a U.S. District Court to place them on the 2010 ballot. Here is the brief. The lawsuit had been filed by the two parties on May 7, and is Woodruff v Herrera, cv-09-449.

The basis for the request is that the Libertarian Party asked for the petition blanks in January 2009, but was told that the Secretary of State’s practice is not to make the forms available until October of odd years, even though there is no law on the subject of when such petitions may be circulated. The brief cites the recent U.S. District Court decision from Rhode Island, in which Rhode Island’s law mandating that petitions to create a new party may not be circulated until January 1 of an election year was held unconstitutional.