Thanks to Green Party Watch for this link to an in-depth article about the Maine Green Party in DownEast.com, a well-known magazine that covers Maine.

The Green Party in Maine is the nation’s strongest state unit of any nationally-organized minor party. The Maine Green Party, and the New York Conservative Party, are the only parties that have managed to poll at least 5% of the vote four times in a row for Governor, in all the years since World War II ended. The Minnesota Independence Party has polled over 5% for Governor three times in a row, and might add a fourth instance in 2010. One must go all the way back to the 1940’s to find other minor parties (either one-state parties, or nationally-organized parties) that polled 5% for Governor four times in a row.

In 2008, four Green Party nominees for the state legislature outpolled their Republican opponents. Those Green candidates were William Linnell for State Senate, and for the House, Michael Hiltz, Daniel Jenkins and Sandy Amborn.

The June 3 issue of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Post-Gazette has this article about new revelations in the ongoing investigation of “bonusgate”. That is the common Pennsylvania term for the 2004-2006 incidents in which state employees, on state time, did political work for the Democratic Party, including substantial work on challenging the Ralph Nader petition in 2004 and the Green Party petition in 2006. Thanks to Larry Otter for the link. The new revelations concern attempts to destroy evidence, including destroying state computers and disks of e-mails.

See this interesting story at Robbin Stewart’s blog. As Stewart says, the West Virginia law make it a crime to distribute anonymous campaign literature must be considered unconstitutional, since the U.S. Supreme Court has twice ruled that the First Amendment protects anonymous leaflets. The authors of The Federalist Papers even published their essays anonymously.