On April 14, the Massachusetts Libertarian Party filed this brief in the First Circuit, in Barr v Galvin, 09-2426.
http://www.antiwar.com/ban/Appellee-brief-as-filed.pdf
The issue is whether the Massachusetts Libertarian Party should have been permitted to use a stand-in presidential candidate on its 2008 ballot access petition. The U.S. District Court had ruled in 2008 that Massachusetts must let the party use a stand-in.
The state is unhappy with that decision, and it is trying to get it reversed. Of course, since the 2008 election is over, the only impact from the upcoming First Circuit decision will be on future elections.
Barr v Galvin is the first case on using stand-ins on petitions to reach any U.S. Court of Appeals. In the past, when various states have lost on this issue, they have not cared about the issue enough to appeal. States that have barred stand-ins, and been told by courts that they must permit them, besides Massachusetts, are Florida (twice) and Virginia.
Paulie) For any readers who don’t know, stand-in candidates allow their names to be put on petitions so that they can be circulated before their parties actually select their nominees, with the understanding that the actual candidates will be substituted after they are known. For example, Illinois designates a 90-day period from late March til late June when party petitions may be circulated, and requires that candidates be listed, but allows stand-ins. If it did not allow stand-ins, the parties that have to petition would either have to move their convention before the petition period starts, have less time to circulate, or forego ballot access in llinois. In this example, the Libertarian Party has had its national conventions at the end of May in recent years, and would thus have less than a month to circulate in Illinois if stand-ins were not allowed in that state. Similar situations exist in quite a few states.
The Massachusetts ballot access drive in question – which I worked on before and after the Libertarian national convention in Denver – started well before the eventual candidate was selected.
Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( http://revolution2.osixs.org )
We don’t need another party. We need a revolution. Get a backbone and join the revolution slackers… Its time to stop fooling around and petition to fundamentally rebuild our government from the ground up. The time for musical parties is over. We’re out of time and money. We’re almost bankrupt and the buzzards or circling..