On September 4, the Maine Libertarian Party and Bob Barr filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, against the August 8 petition deadline for independent presidential petitions. Libertarian Party of Maine v Dunlap, 1:08-cv-288.

Maine has two statutory deadlines, an August 8 deadline for petitions to be turned in to the town clerks, and an August 15 deadline for turning in the verified petitions to the Secretary of State. This year, August 8 is a Friday. Some of the Barr petitions were not submitted to the towns until the following Monday, August 11. Traditionally, the town clerk deadline has not been strictly enforced. Unfortunately, this year, after Herb Hoffman was eliminated from the ballot as an independent candidate by the Maine Supreme Court, the Secretary of State said the deadline must be strictly obeyed. Meanwhile, Herb Hoffman on September 4 asked a U.S. District Court to reconsider its earlier order that said he could not seek help from the federal courts.

On September 4, the 1st Circuit ruled that an appeal on the bilingual ballot issue fails, for procedural reasons. Therefore, the ruling of the U.S. District Court remains, and Puerto Rico must print this year’s ballots (and future ballots) in English as well as Spanish. After the U.S. District Court had ordered bilingual ballots (instead of ballots printed only in Spanish) one member of the Puerto Rico Election Commission had filed an appeal with the 1st Circuit. But, the 1st Circuit said that one member doesn’t have the authority to file an appeal all by himself. Thanks to Rosemary Rodriguez for this news. Diffenderfer v Cruz-Maldonado, 08-2107.

As most regular readers are aware, on July 10, the Pennsylvania Attorney General indicted a dozen state employees for doing partisan political work on government time, with government computers and other resources. Some of that partisan political work was participating in the challenge to Ralph Nader’s 2004 Pennsylvania petition, and also the challenge to the Green Party’s 2006 petition.

Nader then asked the Pennsylvania Commonwealth to re-open the matter of whether they should each be required to pay approximately $80,000 to the people who challenged their petitions. The justification for the re-opening was that the challengers had acted corruptly. On August 29, Judge Bonnie Leadbetter issued an order, requiring the challengers to Nader’s petition to respond to Nader’s request for a reopening.

The reason Nader has still not paid the $80,000 is that his bank is in the District of Columbia, and the D.C. Superior Court has never agreed to let the 2004 challengers seize Nader’s bank account. The D.C. court hasn’t denied the request either; it simply hasn’t acted. On August 22, Nader’s attorneys notified the D.C. Superior Court of the new activity in the Pennsylvania court.

The Green Party has not asked the Commonwealth Court to re-open the matter of its $80,000 problem for 2006. Instead the Green Party went to the State Supreme Court. There is no response to that request so far.