The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will hear “In re Nomination Paper of Nader” on March 1 in Pittsburgh. The issue is whether Ralph Nader should be required to pay attorneys fees of approximately $80,000. In Pennsylvania, when a candidate petition is challenged, the issue of whether the petition is valid goes immediately to court. Nader submitted approximately 50,000 signatures in 2004, to meet a requirement of 25,697. The state court determined he didn’t have enough valid signatures. Now the people who challenged his petition are claiming that Nader, as the loser in a court case, should be required to pay attorneys fees for the challengers. Since the Nader 2004 petition was the first minor party or independent statewide petition that had been challenged since 1938, there is no clear precedent for this type of petition, on the matter of attorneys fees. The hearing is at 801 City-County Building in the morning; court starts at 9 a.m. and the Nader hearing is 5th.

Ohio State Senator Charlie Wilson said on February 24 that he will be a write-in candidate in the May 2 Ohio Democratic primary for U.S. House, 6th district. He has two opponents for the nomination whose names will be on the ballot, but they have never been elected to any office and have little or no support from Ohio Democratic Party leaders. Wilson’s write-in campaign has been endorsed by the current congressman in that district, Ted Strickland, who is leaving congress to run for Governor.

Ohio does not have a tradition of write-in winners. The state banned write-ins between 1947 and 1968. A 3-judge federal court struck down the state’s ban on write-ins in 1968, in lawsuits filed by the Socialist Labor Party and the George Wallace campaign. Wilson has to be a write-in candidate because he failed to file 50 valid signatures to be on the ballot.

On February 22, the 9th circuit declined to strike down Oregon’s law, banning the practice of paying initiative circulators per signature. The court said “We do not hold that the law is facially constitutional. Rather, we hold that the district court did not clearly err in determining plaintiffs failed to establish that the law imposes a severe burden.” Evidence in the case presented by the plaintiffs was feeble, whereas the state did a better job of presenting evidence in support of the law. Prete v Bradbury, 04-35285. A similar law had been upheld in North Dakota, but similar laws in Idaho, Maine, Mississippi and Washington had been struck down in U.S. District Courts.