On April 23, a new party submitted enough valid signatures to qualify for the Puerto Rican ballot. It is the Puerto Ricans for Puerto Rico Party. Puerto Rico requires a petition signed by 5% of the number of registered voters, for a new party to qualify. This is the first time a new party has qualified in Puerto Rico since 1984. The party could not have succeeded, without the ballot access victory in the First Circuit in 2003. That case, called Perez Guzman v Gracia, struck down a Puerto Rico law that said no one could circulate the petition for a new party unless that person was both an attorney and a notary public. The First Circuit, based in Boston, has jurisdiction over Puerto Rico as well as over four New England states.

On April 23, Yahoo!, The Huffington Post, and Slate, jointly announced that they will sponsor two primary season presidential debates, one for Republicans and one for Democrats. These will be on-line debates, probably in September 2007. They will be restricted to candidates who have announced their candidacies, and they will probably also be restricted to those Republican and Democratic presidential candidates who have been accepted by those parties as “legitimate.” In recent decades, the two major parties have been in the habit of compiling a list of “legitimate” candidates, those who are invited into party-sponsored debates. Generally one needs to be, or have been, a federal office-holder or a Governor to get onto this list, although Wesley Clark and Al Sharpton made it onto the Democratic list in 2004.

On August 23, Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle, a Republican, vetoed SB 1956. It would have provided that Hawaii join the proposed compact of states that would appoint presidential electors pledged to the presidential candidate who got the most popular votes nationwide.

It is conceivable that the legislature will override her veto.