On Friday, August 1, the Peace & Freedom Party held a presidential forum in Sacramento, in preparation for its state convention on August 2-3. Each of the four presidential candidates seeking the nomination had his or her own hospitality suite between 5 pm and 7 pm. Then, there was a 3-hour presidential candidates’ forum. The four candidates are Gloria La Riva, Cynthia McKinney, Brian Moore, and Ralph Nader. The room was filled to standing-room capacity, and the tone of the forum was friendly on all sides. All at the forum were vice-presidential candidates Stewart Alexander and Matt Gonzalez.

On July 30, the Louisiana Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of Jimmy Fahrenholtz, who wanted to run for U.S. House in the Democratic primary on September 6. The State Court of Appeals had earlier tied 4-4 on whether he should be on the ballot. The case is Williams v Fahrenholtz, 2008-ca-0961. The issue was whether a candidate for Congress can be kept off the ballot because part of his declaration of candidacy contains an untrue statement relating to whether he had any outstanding campaign finance fines or unpaid assessments.

The outcome contradicts 90 years of jurisprudence, that candidates for Congress cannot be kept off the ballot because of any crimes or punishments. The precedent is so strong, candidates for Congress have even been permitted to run from prison, or while fugitives from justice. However, in this Louisiana case, the candidate did not raise the constitutional issue at the trial court level, so the appeals courts wouldn’t fully consider it either. Thanks to Randall T. Hayes for this news. For more information, see this story.

The West Virginia Constitution Party submitted 20,610 signatures to be on the 2008 ballot for president. Some of them had been turned in previously and have an 80% validity rate. Unfortunately the petition only counts for president. In order to count for Governor, all the signatures would have been due in May. So although all the petitions have the gubernatorial candidate listed, the petitions will only be useful for putting Chuck Baldwin on the ballot.

The West Virginia Libertarian presidential petition probably doesn’t have enough valid signatures. The campaign is continuing to obtain more, and will submit them soon. If the first batch is insufficient, a particular experienced attorney will file a lawsuit against the deadline. The basis for the lawsuit will be Anderson v Celebrezze.

The Pennsylvania Constitution Party will probably also collect more signatures and turn them in, and bring a lawsuit against Pennsylvania’s August 1 deadline. The party was short approximately 2,500 signatures on the August 1 deadline. The Pennsylvania Green Party will probably join in with this lawsuit, or file a similar lawsuit, if it can collect another 12,000 signatures in Pennsylvania in the next few weeks.