On September 5, U.S. District Court Judge John Copenhaver upheld West Virginia ballot access laws for president. Barr v Ireland, 2:08-0990.

The decision is 34 pages long. It puts heavy stress on the problems that a later deadline than August 1 would cause elections officials. Of course, if the state didn’t require so many signatures (over 15,000), the burden on the elections officials would be less.

Also the decision points out that the August 1 presidential deadline, combined with the 2% petition requirement, was met by the Libertarian Party in 2004, and by Ralph Nader in 2004. Also the decision points out that, this year, the Constitution Party and Ralph Nader qualified. Finally, the decision notes that if the Barr petition had started just two weeks earlier, it very likely would have succeeded.

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.