On October 9, U.S. District Court Judge Sam Haddon denied injunctive relief to Steve Kelly (independent candidate for U.S. Senate) on the grounds that since Kelly didn’t pay the filing fee, he has no standing to challenge the other ballot access laws that kept Kelly off the ballot. Kelly v Johnson, cv-08-25.

Judge Haddon appears to have overlooked a 9th circuit opinion that has a different opinion about standing. Erum v Cayetano, 881 F 2d 689 (1989) says that even voters have standing to challenge ballot access laws. The Kelly case includes a plaintiff-voter, and also, of course, Kelly himself is a voter as well as a candidate.

Kelly had filed his lawsuit in April, alleging that the new March petition deadline is unconstitutional, and also that the number of signatures needed (slightly over 10,000) is unconstitutional because the state only requires 5,000 signatures for an entire new party.

On April 8, 2008, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Montana’s new March petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidate deadlines. The case was filed on behalf of Steve Kelly, independent candidate for U.S. Senate this year.

No hearing was held until September 18, 2008, when a hearing was held on Kelly’s request for injunctive relief. As of October 9, three weeks later, U.S. District Court Judge Sam Haddon has still not ruled on the request for injunctive relief. In the meantime, though, on September 30, he denied injunctive relief for another independent candidate for U.S. Senate who had not filed her case until August 27. That candidate, Patty Lovaas, had run in this year’s June Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Judge Haddon denied her request for relief on the basis that she could not be an independent candidate because a Montana law bars independent candidates who have been associated with a political party.

On October 8, a status conference was held in Libertarian Party of Connecticut v Bysiewicz, the case to get Bob Barr on the ballot. The judge wants to see copies of all the petitions, and so photocopying is going on as quickly as possible. The issue is whether there really are 7,500 valid signatures for Barr.