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.

Last year, Bob Barr (Libertarian Party presidential nominee) and his candidates for presidential elector filed a federal lawsuit against Oklahoma’s procedure for an independent presidential candidate to get on the ballot, a petition signed by 3% of the last presidential vote (in 2008, that was 43,913 valid signatures). The case went to U.S. District Court David Russell, who had upheld that same law both in 1996 and 2000, and who upheld it again. The Barr candidates for presidential elector have decided not to appeal to the 10th circuit, in the hopes that a complete lack of any ballot access litigation will make it more likely that the Oklahoma legislature will reform the ballot access laws.

Lobbyists have noted that when state legislators hear that a constitutional lawsuit is pending, their tendency is to refuse to support legislation on the same subject, saying they would rather wait for the court decision. HB 1072, easing the ballot access laws for new and previously unqualified parties, did pass both houses of the Oklahoma legislature this year, although final passage must wait for 2010 since the conference committee did not pass the bill this year.