The Arizona Supreme Court will decide on July 7 whether petition signatures are valid if the signer only lists a Post Office box, not a physical residence address. The case is Jenkins v Hale, cv 08-0208-AP-EL. The issue must be decided in time for the September 2 primary, so it is being rushed. The Court will decide based on the written briefs (the last of which is being submitted this morning). There will be no oral argument. The case arose because the petitions of three Democratic candidates for the legislature in the northeastern corner of Arizona were challenged. The lower court ruled in favor of the validity of the signatures. The three candidates whose ballot position is at stake are Senator Albert Hale, and House candidates Albert Tom and Chris Descheeny. UPDATE: The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision, so that candidates Albert Hale and Chris Descheeny will be on the September 2 primary ballot. The Court said it will explain its reasoning later. Candidate Albert Tom, who is an incumbant, will not be on the primary ballot. Even counting signatures with post office boxes instead of physical addresses, he needed 522 valid signatures and only had 495 valid.

Zogby Polls released these results on July 6: Obama 44%, McCain 38%, Barr 6%, other and undecided 12%.

Recent Rasmussen Polls only list Obama and McCain, but the latest Rasmussen Poll showed a 5% lead for Obama over McCain. It is unfortunate that the presidential polls don’t list all 6 candidates who will be on the ballot in states containing a majority of electoral votes.

The last poll that seems to have asked voters to choose from four candidates was this CNN poll, released July 2. It shows Nader at 6% and Barr at 3%.

U.S. political parties, especially smaller parties, seem prone to fierce intra-party disputes. Ballot Access News is fundamentally a blog about election law as it relates to minor parties and independent candidates. BAN also carries news about the activities of minor parties and independent presidential candidates, especially news related to their attempts to get on ballots. Readers of blogs about this subject are, of course, also interested in intra-party disputes. Sometimes a blog item at this cite is a venue for people on both sides of an intra-party dispute to use the comments section to get their viewpoint across. That is fine. Unfortunately, some of the comments on the Reform Party posting of June 23 became so heated, allegations were made by some posters, that other posters had committed libel. Therefore, the June 23 blog entry about the Reform Party has been deleted. If people wish to make new comments about the internal disputes in the Reform Party, attached to this blog item, they are welcome, but please moderate any comments you make to be respectful of all individuals. UPDATE: no individual asked me to delete the original post and all the comments. Instead, one individual asked me to delete two particular comments. The idea to delete the entire original post and all the comments was mine alone.