Virginia House of Delegates member Leo Wardrup introduced HB 3157 on January 19. It would impose mandatory filing fees on all non-paupers who petition their way onto a general election ballot, or a primary election ballot. The fees would be 2% of the annual salary. Congressional filing fees would be approximately $3,300. The bill exempts presidential candidates.

The US Supreme Court said in 1972 and in 1974 that filing fees for non-paupers are constitutional if they are for the purpose of keeping the ballot uncrowded. However, Virginia already has difficult petition requirements for that purpose.

Wardrup is a Republican from Virginia Beach. He has been in the legislature since 1991 and is considered one of the more powerful members. He is chair of the Transportation Committee. He says he is worried that the November ballots will be crowded, because in 2006 the legislature passed a bill letting cities move their city elections from May to November, and therefore November ballots may be very lengthy since they will have federal offices and city offices both.

See here to see whether any particular state has a bill to implement the National Popular Vote plan. The map shows which states have bills on that subject. Clicking on that state tells the bill number and the names of the sponsors.

On January 19, 2007, the 9th circuit issued an opinion in Citizens for Clean Government v City of San Diego, no. 04-56964. San Diego has a $250 contribution limit to candidates for city council. The question was whether the city could enforce this limit against a group that was trying to raise money to hire paid petitioners to circulate a recall petition against a member of the city council.

The U.S. District Court had said the city could limit campaign contributions to a committee that was raising money to hire paid circulators for a recall petition. But the 9th circuit said that this conclusion isn’t necessarily valid, at least in the absense of any hard evidence. The 9th circuit remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court, but made it plain that unless the city can show that someone would be bribed by a policy of allowing unlimited contributions to a recall petition effort, the limit is unconstitutional in that situation.

The whole rationale for campaign contribution limits has been the fear that if campaign contribution limits didn’t exist, wealthy individuals could give a great deal of money to a candidate, hope that candidate got elected, and then expect the candidate (now an office-holder) to do favors for the donor. But contributions to some cause that isn’t trying to elect a particular person are outside the scope of this fear.

The precedent may help to persuade a federal court in Washington, D.C., to overturn a Federal Election Commission ruling, and let Unity08 raise unlimited contributions to finance petition drives to get itself on the ballot. Unity08 has no candidate at this time. No known particular candidate will be helped by such petition drives, especially during an odd year.