The New York Times of July 31, 2006 has a lengthy story on Aaron Russo’s film “America: From Freedom to Fascism”. The story erroneously says “Russo sought the Libertarian Party nomination for president in 2004 but dropped out because of ill health.” Actually, Russo did seek that nomination actively, and did not drop out, and was instead defeated at the party’s national convention on the third ballot.
On July 25, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General instructed state elections officials to delete the “loyalty oath” on declarations of candidacy. The law, which was upheld in federal court in 1970, requires all candidates for state and local office to swear that they are not “subversive persons”.
The Attorney General acted after he was informed that the Socialist Workers Party was about to sue, to overturn the oath. In 1974 the U.S. Supreme Court had unanimously ruled that such candidate and political party oaths violate the First Amendment.
For the past several weeks, each signature on the Green Party’s statewide Illinois petition has been undergoing validation. The process is two-thirds done, and so far the Green validity rate is running above 75%, so it is very likely the petition will be ruled valid. 25,000 valid are required and Greens submitted 39,000.
The three Pennsylvania qualified minor parties are awaiting a decision from the 3rd circuit, on whether they should be required to submit petitions this year. In the meantime, the Green Party has spent $100,000 in Pennsylvania this year, to obtain the needed 67,070 valid signatures. The deadline is August 1, and the Green Party’s statewide slate expects to turn in at least 90,000 signatures.
The Constitution Party is a ballot-qualified party in Wisconsin, so it nominates by primary. Parties remain on the ballot by polling 1% for any statewide race.
The only two individuals running for statewide office in the Constitution Party both failed to get enough signatures to be on their own party’s primary ballot. Therefore, unless either of them can get 2,000 write-ins in their own party’s primary in September, neither will be on the November ballot. Chances are high that the party will then go off the ballot, since it won’t have polled 1% for any statewide office.
