As noted earlier, on August 18, a Republican Party official in Pennsylvania filed a challenge to Bob Barr’s appearance on the Pennsylvania ballot. Pennsylvania law provides for stand-ins on petitions, and provides that petitions should include a substitution committee, so that if any candidate named on the petition withdraws, the substitution committee is in charge of naming the replacement candidate. The lawsuit complains that the Libertarian petition, which was circulated between February and August, should not have been circulated with the stand-in, after the late May national convention had determined the actual nominee. The complaint argues that the state should print the stand-in presidential candidate on the November ballot, instead of Bob Barr. The stand-in is Libertarian Party activist Rochelle Etzel.

The lawsuit attached 139 pages of exhibits. They include the national Libertarian Party Bylaws and Convention Rules (14 pages); the Minutes of the National Convention, including appendices that give the roll-call vote for all nominations, both public office and party office (86 pages); the Minutes of the National Committee meeting of May 26 (7 pages); some internal e-mail between the national party and the Pennsylvania party (2 pages); an inventory of each petition sheet, listing the circulators for all 1,430 sheets (28 pages); and copies of Bob Barr’s candidate affidavit and the Substitution Committee Certificate (2 pages).

None of this material is damaging to the Libertarian Party or Bob Barr. The internal e-mail from David Jahn merely says, “We need to continue collecting signatures under Rochelle and Chuck Boust names. Once we get enough to qualify them for the ballot, we’ll submit the nominations papers in their names. Then they will withdraw and we’ll substitute their names with the actual candidates. I know it sounds weird, but that is the way we have to do it in Pennsylvania.”

The logical flaw in the lawsuit is that it assumes the national convention in May changed the presidential nominee of the Pennsylvania Libertarian Party. In law, national conventions have no authority whatsoever. They only have moral authority. Any state party (whether a major party or a minor party) is free to choose its own presidential candidate, since in law, only state parties nominate candidates for presidential elector. The presidential electors are the true candidates in November, and if a state party ignores the choice of the national party, it may do so. Examples are the Alabama Democratic Party in 1968 and 1964, the Democratic Parties of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina in 1948, the Arizona Libertarian Party in 2000, and the Republican Parties of California and South Dakota in 1912.

The exhibits seem to be an instance of giving a judge far more information about the Libertarian Party than the judge could possibly want or need to decide the case, but it will be an asset for any historian some day researching the Libertarian Party as it functioned in 2008.

Frequently, minor parties in the U.S. decide to stop running candidates for public office, but they continue to exist as organizations and they continue to publish a periodical. Sometimes the life span of the periodical is far greater than the lifespan of that party’s electoral activity.

The National States Rights Party was formed in 1958 and placed nominees on the ballot in elections 1960 through 1964. After 1964, it ran its nominees in Democratic primaries for ten years, and then completely stopped running candidates. But its monthly newspaper continued. That newspaper was called The Thunderbolt. Later it was renamed The Truth At Last. After 50 years, however, it will no longer be published. The editor for the last 50 years, Edward R. Fields, is retiring and recommending to his subscribers that they subscribe to the David Duke Report.

Other minor parties that have stopped running candidates, but which still exist as organizations and which still have periodicals, are the Communist Party (which publishes the People’s Weekly World) and the Socialist Labor Party (which publishes The People).

As news sources have reported, Barack Obama indicated very early on August 23 that he wants the Democratic National Convention to choose Joe Biden for vice-president. CNN reported the news at 1 a.m. eastern time, and the Obama campaign sent out text messages to Obama supporters a few hours later.

2008 is the first presidential election in U.S. history at which neither major party’s vice-presidential nominee was known as late as August 22. At least one major party’s complete ticket was realistically known by August 8, in all previous presidential elections. Of course, in approximately half of all presidential elections, the incumbent vice-president was running for re-election, so in those elections the identity of one of the major party vice-presidential candidates was known, or assumed, even before the presidential election year itself.