On May 19, the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters filed a federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The complaint can be seen here. It alleges that justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court entered into secret meetings with legislative leaders, bargaining with those leaders to increase judicial pay. In exchange, the justices were to decide the outcome of certain pending cases in a way that would be pleasing to legislative leaders. Thanks to Howard Bashman’s How Appealing for this news.

Both the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and the Pennsylvania legislature, have been resolutely hostile to minor party and independent candidate ballot access, for decades, but especially in this decade.

Shane Cory had been the Libertarian Party’s national director for many years, but he resigned recently. He has now shifted to working for the Richard Viguerie organization. As noted in an earlier post, Viguerie’s company recently purchased ThirdPartyWatch.

On May 19, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius vetoed HB 2019, which would have provided for a Kansas presidential primary, starting in 2012. This year, Kansas was one of only 10 states with no presidential primary.

The bill said that the presidential primary should be the first Saturday in February. In 2012, the first Saturday in February is February 4. The major parties don’t allow presidential primaries before the first Tuesday in February (except that the Democratic Party gives special rights to four particular states). In 2012, the first Tuesday in February is February 7, so the Kansas primary would have been in violation of the rules of both major parties.

HB 2019 also provides that voters at the polls must show a government photo-Id. The Governor’s message said she is vetoing the bill because of that part of the bill. The Governor praised the part of the bill establishing a presidential primary, and implied she would have signed the bill if it had not had any provisions about photo voter-ID. The Governor did not acknowledge that the primary date would have violated national major party rules.