On September 23, Washington state Democrats filed a lawsuit in state court against the Secretary of State, who plans to print “Prefers GOP” on the November ballot next to the name of Dino Rossi, one of the two ballot-listed candidates for Governor. The lawsuit alleges that the Secretary of State should print “Prefers Republican” instead. It is common knowledge that Rossi is a Republican. Here is the complaint.

The law says candidates are free to say which political party they prefer, and furthermore the law says any group is a political party. A major party is one that polled 5% in the last election, but a minor party is any organization that is not a major party. The lawsuit also faces procedural hurdles. The Secretary of State says it should have been filed back in June, when the list of candidates and their preferences was made public. The case is Smith v Reed, in King County Superior Court, 08-2-33009-5. It has a hearing Friday, September 26, at 9 a.m., before Judge Eadie.

A poll (which is hard to believe) shows that when Rossi is listed as a Republican, he trails by 10%; but when he is listed as “GOP”, he is ahead by 4%.

On September 24, attorneys for Ralph Nader sent a letter to the U.S. attorney in Scranton, Pennsylvania, asking him to open an investigation into likely illegal acts committed by the people who challenged his 2004 Pennsylvania petition, and similar acts committed in 2006 against the Green Party’s petition. Although this matter is active in Pennsylvania state court, the Nader letter details the federal election laws that may also have been violated.

In addition, Nader supplemented his Federal Election Commission complaint (which he had filed in May 2008) with information about Pennsylvania that has been publicly revealed since then.

The effort to show that the Connecticut Libertarian statewide petition has at least 7,500 valid signatures is making good headway. The state had initially said there were only 6,999 valid signatures, but it turns out that the state made an addition error. The correct sum should have been, and is now acknowledged to be, 7,279 signatures. In addition to that, it appears that 116 petition sheets were lost while they were in the custody of either the towns, or the state. Unfortunately the Barr campaign did not make photocopies of all the sheets. In addition to all that, the Libertarian activists who are still re-validating signatures are finding signatures that are valid, but which had been improperly invalidated. That work continues.