Brief filed in Pennsylvania ballot access case

October 4, 2008

The campaign has filed a brief to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Just to refresh your memory, a Republican operative acting on behalf of the McCain campaign filed a lawsuit seeking to remove Bob Barr from the ballot. Interestingly, McCain was a vocal proponent of fair ballot access during his failed presidential bid in 2000, calling efforts to block him from the ballot in New York “Stalinist politics.”

It was announced just before the vice-presidential debate that the McCain had pulled out of Michigan. His campaign acknowledged that he needed to take one of three states in order to win the election, Pennsylvania was one of the states. It’s pretty obvious what McCain is trying to do.

The lawsuit was rejected by Judge Johnny Butler, who wrote:

“In nominating Etzel prior to the Libertarian National Convention and substituting Barr thereafter, the Party and LPPa merely complied with the Party’s election process as it has been established in Pennsylvania since 1996 when, nationally, the Party moved its convention from a date prior to the legal date for circulation of Pennsylvania nomination papers to a subsequent date. Since then, given the time constraints, the Party and LPPa have deemed it necessary to circulate nomination papers prior to their national convention in order to take full and fair advantage of the time period allotted under Pennsylvania’s Election Code to secure the necessary signatures in support of their candidate…the Party simply took reasonable action to abide by the Election Code while furthering its legitimate interest.”

Shortly after getting shutout of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, the McCain campaign appealed the decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which is where we stand today.

The lawsuit is also causing problems for local election officials who have had to hold off sending out absentee ballots.

Our brief, which was filed yesterday, asks the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to affirm the lower court decision. The brief adds that the cases isn’t about the law, which we have clearly followed. It is politically motivated:

In essence, this is a ballot access case. Apparently the Republican Party has decided that Mr. Barr will drain a significant number of voters from John McCain’s election and, therefore, have chosen to file this challenge to Mr. Barr’s candidacy.

We are very confident that the court will shoot down this arrogant attempt by the McCain campaign to ignore clearly stated and clearly followed law.

I’ll be keeping you up to date on the situtation. You can download our brief here.

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Brief filed in Pennsylvania ballot access case