On May 2, the Working Families Party of South Carolina attempted to submit 22,000 signatures, to qualify itself. The election law says the deadline is “six months before the general election”, which this year means May 7.

However, notwithstanding the state’s own law, and not withstanding a precedent from 1996, the South Carolina Election Commission claims the signatures should have been submitted in February 2006. In 1996, when the Natural Law Party submitted its South Carolina party petition in May, the state had said they were too late. The Natural Law Party had then sued in federal court, and at the hearing, the state had admitted that the Natural Law Party was right. Now, even though the South Carolina Election Commission knows about their stance in 1996, the Election Commission says if the Working Families Party wants to have candidates this year, the party must sue all over again.

Illinois State Senator James Meeks, who was elected as the nominee of his “Honesty and Integrity” Party in 2002, and who has threatened to get his party on the statewide ballot this year, still won’t say if he is going to do that, according to Illinois newspapers published on May 2. If he is going to do it, and to be its candidate for Governor, he needs 25,000 signatures by June 26.

On May 1, the U.S. Justice Department sued Alabama for failing to produce a statewide computerized list of registered voters in the state. The object of the lawsuit is, of course, to force the state to expedite this task. Under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, all states that agreed to create such a statewide list received substantial federal funding. The list should have been in existence on January 1, 2006. USA v State of Alabama, 2:06cv-392, m.d.