The Socialist Workers Party will appear on the Delaware ballot this year, for the first time ever. This Militant article says it is the first time in 30 years, but actually it is the first time ever. It is also the first time a Marxist party has appeared on the ballot in Delaware since 1976, when the Socialist Labor Party ran its last presidential campaign.

Finally, the SWP in Delaware is the first Marxist party in U.S. history that ever got on any state’s ballot by having a certain number of registered voters. Marxist parties generally don’t encourage people to register as members. Ever since 1978, the only method for a party to get on the Delaware ballot is by persuading one-twentieth of 1% of the state’s voters to publicly join the party, by filling out voter registration forms listing themselves as members. This year that requires 284 registered members. The SWP got most of these registrants in 2004, but they weren’t processed in time for the SWP to be on the ballot in 2004, and the party was not active in Delaware in the 2006 elections.

Nationally, the Socialist Workers Party has enjoyed an exemption from reporting its federal campaign contributions and expenditures ever since 1982, but its exemption runs out at the end of 2008. The party will try to persuade the Federal Election Commission to extend its exemption.

The Guardian, one of Great Britain’s major newspapers, has this article about the Working Families Party in its July 9 issue.

On July 10, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General announced indictments against a state legislator, a former state legislator, and ten Democratic legislative staffers, for accepting public funds to work on the petition challenges to Ralph Nader in 2004 and the Green Party statewide petition in 2006. Here is the press release from the Attorney General.

The grand jury found that as many as 50 Democratic House Caucus staff members participated in the 2004 Nader petition challenge. Some employees spent an entire week working on the challenge. For the 2006 challenge to the Green Party statewide petition, the same activity occurred. Staffers were told, “It’s very important to the (Democratic House) leadership that the Green Party not appear on the ballot, and also not to worry about taking vacation time, but to work on government time.

There was also a great deal of other partisan work done by state employees on government time that did not deal with the Nader and Green Party petition challenges. See this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.