On January 5, Oklahoma State Senator Randy Brogdon introduced SB 28, which lowers the number of signatures for a new party from 5% of the last vote cast, to 5,000 signatures. Between 1924 and 1975, Oklahoma had required 5,000 signatures to recognize a new party, and the state never had more than 4 parties on the ballot (including the Democratic and Republican Parties) in all those years.

SB 28 also lowers the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot from 10% for the top office (president/governor), to 1%. Finally, a group is free to pay $5,000 instead of collecting 5,000 signatures; it chooses whether to pay the money or to collect the signatures.

The regular session of the Florida legislature doesn’t start until March 6, 2007. Nevertheless, the House Ethics and Elections Committee held a hearing on January 10 on a proposed bill to move the Florida presidential primary from early March to January 29. The proposal is worded such that Florida’s presidential primary would be one week after New Hampshire’s primary. Currently, New Hampshire’s primary is set for January 22, 2008, although New Hampshire gives its Secretary of State authority to move the presidential primary, so New Hampshire’s date might change.

On January 9, a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court held a trial on whether the Green Party’s candidate for U.S. Senate in 2006 should be required to pay almost $89,668. This amount represents court costs, witness fees, and attorneys’ fees, for the process that removed Romanelli from the November 2006 ballot.

The head of the Pennsylvania Elections Department was on the stand, and admitted that Philadelphia County, among others, failed to record any write-ins for Romanelli or anyone else.

Romanelli’s attorney made arguments that the whole idea that a candidate can be forced to pay, violates the U.S. Supreme Court filing fee precedents, but the judge refused to hear the constitutional arguments. However, if an appeal is necessary, the constitutional arguments can be raised again. It was important that they were introduced at the trial level. One of the weaknesses of Ralph Nader’s parallel case on this same issue (which the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear on January 8, 2007) was that the constitutional issues hadn’t been raised in the courts below.