On June 2, an independent candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate filed a lawsuit in federal court, challenging several aspects of Pennsylvania ballot access procedures. The candidate, Dennis Baylor, is representing himself, but the complaint is very well-drafted. The election code does not actually require petition signers to be registered voters, but merely “qualified electors”. The term “qualified electors” has long been defined in Pennsylvania to mean people who are eligible to register (whether they are actually registered or not). The Baylor complaint asks that state officials be required to live up to this definition. It also complains that independent and minor party candidates who complete their petitions early have no means to establish that they are now ballot-qualified. Current practice sets the petitions aside until after the August 1 deadline, which leaves candidates who petition for the general election in limbo, sometimes for months. The case is Baylor v Cortes, cv-08-1060, Middle District.
A more far-reaching federal lawsuit against some other Pennsylvania ballot access practices should be filed soon, by several minor parties. It will challenge Pennsylvania’s practice of putting candidates in jeopardy for tens of thousands of dollars, should their petitions not have enough valid signatures. It will challenge the failure of some Pennsylvania counties to count write-ins votes. Finally, it will attack the state’s insistence that petition forms must say that the signers are “nominating” the candidates listed on the petition form, when actually those candidates have been nominated by their own political parties, at party conventions.