On November 21, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Carl Romanelli and his attorney, Larry Otter, must pay close to $100,000, for the costs associated with removing Romanelli from the November 2006 ballot. Again, the Court ignored the constitutional issue. Ralph Nader had been the first candidate to be required to pay such costs, when he was removed from the ballot in 2004.

The Supreme Court did tell the lower court to re-issue its order, and to include an assessment of costs by category, and a rationale for including each category. It is conceivable that when this is done, the amount might change.

Other courts have ruled that if a state requires a party to nominate by primary, the state must pay the costs of holding that primary. Other courts have ruled that it is unconstitutional to force petitioning candidates and parties to pay the costs of checking their signatures. These decisions stem from the U.S. Supreme Court Harper v Virginia State Board of Elections decision of 1966, invalidating poll taxes.

On November 21, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that giving the two major parties a list of the people who vote in their presidential primaries, and making it a crime to give the list to anyone else, serves a public purpose. Grebner v State, 135274. Here is the decision.

The Justices acted even though the case had only been presented to them two days ago, so obviously they didn’t have much time for careful thought. As to the point about discrimination against minor parties, the majority quoted from Chief Justice Rehnquist’s sentence in Timmons v Twin Cities Area New Party (the 1997 decision that upheld state bans on fusion) that states have an interest in discriminating “in favor of the traditional two-party system”. The Michigan Supreme Court completely ignored a 1970 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Socialist Workers Party v Rockefeller, that specifically said states may not give the list of registered voters to the qualified parties and not the unqualified parties.

The Michigan Libertarian Party is already planning a federal lawsuit to challenge the Michigan discriminatory policy.

There is still no guarantee that Michigan will hold a presidential primary in 2008. The law mandates that unless both the Democratic and Republican Parties want a presidential primary, there will be no presidential primary. Democrats earlier said they wanted a presidential primary, but since the existing law requires candidates to file if they wish to be on the ballot, and since most Democratic contenders had refused to file, it is not certain that Democrats want a primary.

On November 20, the Massachusetts House passed SB 2414, moving the state’s presidential primary from March to February. The bill now goes to the Governor, who has already said he will sign it. This action must have set a record for the shortest amount of lead time before any state legislature ever decided to move an election date. Massachusetts elections officials had complained about the difficulties of planning for this earlier date, but the legislature didn’t listen. The House vote was 135-17.