Under new procedures in New Jersey, everyone running for election in this November’s gubernatorial election must choose a Lieutenant Governor running-mate no later than Monday, July 29.

Incumbent Governor Jon S. Corzine still hasn’t announced any choice. Republican nominee Chris Christie chose Kimberly Guadagno a few days ago. On July 23, Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Ken Kaplan announced that he is choosing John Paff. Paff is somewhat famous among good-government circles for his persistent winning lawsuits to force local officials to obey the Open Public Records Act.

The Socialist Party’s gubernatorial candidate, Greg Pason, earlier chose Tino Rozzo. The leading independent gubernatorial candidate, Chris Daggett, who has qualified for Public Funding and will be included in gubernatorial debates, has not chosen his Lieutenant Governor candidate yet, but may do so on Friday, July 24.

On July 20, the first substantive brief was filed by the plaintiffs in Constitution Party of Pennsylvania, et al, v Cortes, 09-cv-01691, eastern district. This is the case that argues that Pennsylvania’s fees system for candidates who are removed from the ballot violates the U.S. Constitution. Here is the 12-page brief. See especially pages 3-5. UPDATE: here is the Complaint, which was filed April 21, 2009.

Although the issue of the constitutionality of the fees has been before the Pennsylvania state courts ever since early 2005, those courts never seem to have seriously dealt with the constitutional issue. Past U.S. Supreme Court precedents on filing fees, and poll taxes, establish that voters and candidates cannot be charged to pay for the administrative costs of elections.

This early brief is not a full brief on these issues, and is mainly concerned with opposing a motion to dismiss the State Supreme Court justices from the federal case. The plaintiffs are neutral on that procedural issue, but want to preserve their options in case the federal court later decides that the State Supreme Court justices are necessary defendants.

As long-time readers will already know, the fees at issue are those imposed on Ralph Nader in 2004, to pay for the costs of determining that his petition didn’t have enough signatures. A similar issue was raised when the 2006 statewide Green Party was disqualified. Each set of petitioners were charged over $80,000, not as a fine or punishment, but simply because Pennsylvania had a policy of forcing petitioning groups to pay administrative costs, if their petitions lack enough valid signatures.

During the last nine days, several election law bills of interest have added new co-sponsors.

HR1826, public funding for congressional candidates, added 7 co-sponsors and now has 64.

HR3025, to require states to use bipartisan commissions to draw U.S. House district boundaries, added 6 co-sponsors and now has 20.

HR2894, to require states to use only vote-counting machines with a paper trail, added one co-sponsor and now has 82.

HR2499, for a popular vote on Puerto Rico’s political status, added 5 co-sponsors and now has 161.