On January 24, 2008, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth re-did its January 24, 2007 order, in the matter of how much money Carl Romanelli is supposed to pay to the people who challenged his 2006 Green Party petition. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on November 20, 2007, had told the Commonwealth Court Judge to amend his order. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court wanted “an assessment of costs referenced by category and amount assessed as well as a statement of rationale behind the imposition of these costs.”

The amended Commonwealth Court order merely reiterates everything that was in the original order. Now it will go back to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to see if the amended order is good enough for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

One of the ironies in this case is that the Commonwealth Court Judge, James R. Kelley, is being represented in an entirely different matter by the same attorney who is representing Carl Romanelli. In other words, the attorney for the judge is also the attorney for someone who has a case before that judge! It had been thought that Judge Kelley would recuse himself from this latest action, but he did not.

In 2002, a U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania ruled that state law, telling circulators for district office that they cannot work outside of the district they live in, is unconstitutional. The case was Morrill v Weaver, 224 F Supp 2d 882. The state did not appeal.

Notwithstanding that, the state still is not permitting circulators to work outside their home U.S. House district, if those circulators are circulating a presidential primary delegate petition. The state is using the technicality that the 2002 court victory related to the Green Party’s petition to get various candidates on the November ballot. Of course, the decision was based on the First Amendment right of individuals to petition their government and to engage in political speech. In this context, there is no meaningful distinction between district petitions for minor party ballot access to the November election, and district petitions to the primary ballot.

Jonathan Marks, Chief of the Pennsylvania Elections Division, denied the request to let presidential primary delegate petitions be circulated outside the circulator’s home district on January 25. It is not known if any presidential candidate will sue to overturn the ruling. Pennsylvania requires presidential primary candidates to submit a statewide petition of 2,000 names, and then separate petitions of 200 signatures for delegates in each US House district.

On January 25, the Alabama Libertarian Party asked the Alabama Secretary of State to approve presidential substitution on petitions. That means, the party would like to circulate an independent presidential petition now, but since it doesn’t know who the presidential candidate will be, the party wants to use a stand-in. He or she would then withdraw and the actual nominee could be substituted.

Alabama previously let John B. Anderson use a stand-in vice-presidential candidate on his 1980 independent petition. He listed Milton Eisenhower for vice-president, but Eisenhower was a stand-in. Alabama, and almost all other states, let Anderson substitute the actual v-p candidate, Patrick Lucey, after Anderson chose him on August 27, 1980.

Many other states approved presidential substitution during the 1990’s. Those favorable rulings made it possible for the Libertarian Party to move its presidential convention from Labor Day of the odd year before the election, to the summer or spring of the election year itself. The issue hadn’t arisen in Alabama before because the Libertarian Party was a ballot-qualified party in Alabama in 1996 and 2000.