Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Thuggish, beetle-browed War Democrat and abortion foe Bob Casey, the party's Senate hope in Pennsylvania, has succeeded, for the moment at least, in getting the Green Party candidate off the ballot. Thus the Philadelphia Enquirer:

Romanelli thrown off ballot
A judge ruled that the Green Party candidate did not obtain enough valid signatures.

HARRISBURG - A state judge ordered yesterday the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate removed from the ballot because the party did not have enough valid signatures in its nominating petitions.

But Carl Romanelli, who has been challenged by state Democrats, isn't giving up. Romanelli said he remains hopeful that the state Supreme Court will side with him in a separate matter: an appeal of a state judge's decision rejecting Romanelli's arguments that the 2 percent signature threshold should be based on last year's statewide judicial retention elections, which would reduce the number required from 67,070 to fewer than 16,000.

"The Democrats have a long way to go to get me off the ballot," Romanelli said....

The Democratic State Committee's lawsuit spawned a six-week review of tens of thousands of signatures. Romanelli's lawyer had argued that many of the signatures were incorrectly invalidated because of problems with the state's computerized voter registry, but [Judge] Kelley concluded that it was too late to take up that claim.

Pennsylvania law requires minor party and independent candidates to collect a number of signatures equal to 2 percent of the ballots cast for the largest vote-getter in the last statewide election. This year's threshold was based on Casey's record vote count in winning the treasurer's office in 2004, resulting in an unusually high number.

Lawrence Otter, Romanelli's lawyer, has argued that the number of signatures should be based on last year's retention vote for then-State Supreme Court Justice Russell Nigro, who lost his bid to remain on the bench....

Romanelli's support for abortion rights was considered likely to take away votes that would have otherwise gone to Casey, since Casey and Santorum oppose abortion rights. The Democrats' lawsuit challenged about three-quarters of the 94,000 signatures Romanelli gathered, saying they included fake names, unregistered voters and illegible signatures.