Molly O’Leary, Chief of the Pennsylvania Division of Voter Registration, has said that Pennsylvania elections officials will continue to tally voters who are registered in the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties. These parties ceased to be parties under the Pennsylvania definition of “political party”, in November 2006. They lost their status because they did not poll as much as 2% of the winning candidate’s vote in any statewide race in 2006. They failed the vote test because their nominees were kept off the ballot.

This will be the first time that Pennsylvania elections officials have agreed to tally the number of registrants in any parties that no longer meet the definition of “political party”. It is possible that Pennsylvania made this decision because courts have ruled that unqualified parties to have a right to the tally. These decisions are from New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Iowa.

On February 19, the Nebraska Senate (the only house in the Nebraska legislature) overrode last week’s gubernatorial veto of LB 39. As a result, it will soon be illegal for anyone to circulate a petition in Nebraska, unless they are Nebraska residents. Also it will be illegal to pay people to circulate a petition if they are paid per signature.

According to this story in the Philadelphia Daily News, the Pennsylvania extension of the filing deadline for candidates running in the primary benefited ten delegate candidates (pledged to Hillary Clinton) who otherwise would have failed to get on the ballot. Pennsylvania requires a petition signed by 2,000 signatures for presidential candidates to appear on a presidential primary ballot. In addition, candidates for Delegate each need their own petition (within any particular U.S. House district) of 250 signatures.

Pennsylvania elects 103 delegates to the Democratic national convention. According to the story, 10 Clinton delegates would have failed to get on the ballot, except that on the filing deadline, Governor Ed Rendell extended that deadline another two days. He said the extension was due to bad weather. Thanks to Larry Otter for the link. Even given the extension, Clinton did not manage to file a full slate.