On November 24, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and others were jailed for participating in a protest against Russian ballot access laws. Demonstrators are angry that Other Russia Party is barred from the ballot in the upcoming parliamentary elections. See this report. The new Russian ballot access law bars parties from the ballot unless they show that they have at least 50,000 members. The former law only required 10,000 members.
Here is an article in The Citizens Voice, daily newspaper of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, about the November 20 decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court over costs for candidates whose petitions are challenged.
Back on January 24, 2007, Commonwealth Court Judge James R. Kelley had ruled that Carl Romanelli, Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate, must pay $25,481 in wages to the Democratic Party’s petition reviewers, $1,500 for handwriting expert witnesses (even though those witnesses were never used), $48,285 in attorneys’ fees, $3,726 to stenographers, and $1,415 for copying costs. For each category of costs, Judge Kelley explained his rationale. His chief rationale was that the Green Party had failed to have 9 petition reviewers, every day from 8:30 am to 5 pm, during September 2006. Kelly’s order is 24 pages long.
Now the Pennsylvania Supreme Court wants Judge Kelly to further explain his order. It will be interesting to see how long that takes. In the meantime, the various minor parties of Pennsylvania will have time to file a federal challenge to the constitutionality of the Pennsylvania petition-checking system, based on U.S. Supreme Court precedents that poor candidates cannot be charged mandatory fees for running for office. Romanelli owns no real estate, no automobile, has scant savings, and cannot possibly pay $80,408 plus interest.
On November 24, Politico published this story by Ben Smith, about independent voters (he calls them “Perot voters”) who seem unhappy with all the leading presidential candidates so far this year. Thanks to Jack Dean for the referral.
In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that campaign finance disclosure laws are unconstitutional, if they are applied to minor parties whose members and supporters will be harassed if their identities are known. The Socialist Workers Party won this case. The court not only excused the SWP from disclosing the names of people who contribute to party electoral campaigns; it also exempted the party from disclosing its campaign expenditures. This was because, if the party had been required to disclose how it spends its money, those reports would have revealed the names of the party’s employees. The case was called Brown v Socialist Workers ’74 Campaign Committee, 459 US 87.
Since then, three other socialist parties have won similar exemptions. They are the Communist Party, the Socialist Action Party, and the Freedom Socialist Party. Non-socialist minor parties have never even tried to win similar exemptions. Now, however, the Nevada branch of the Constitution Party (which, in Nevada, is the Independent American Party) will make such an attempt, in a lawsuit being prepared. For some years, the Nevada party has been subject to the hostility of various branches of local and state government in Nevada. These disputes have involved arresting party activists for petitioning on public property, and disputes over campaign finance reports.
Here is a Michigan newspaper story that reveals that county elections officials are not yet printing presidential primary ballots, because they can’t be printed until they are designed and then approved by each candidate whose name will be on that ballot.
Independently of that article, BAN editor Richard Winger talked on the telephone today to one Michigan county clerk, and she said she is not printed any ballots yet. She said the Secretary of State merely told each county to “begin preparations”, a very vague command.
