Some political parties remain outlaws in Pa.

By Oliver Hall

Pennsylvanians may notice something unusual when they go to the polls in November: Their choices for governor, lieutenant governor, and U.S. Senate will be limited exclusively to Republican and Democratic candidates. Only four other states' 2010 general-election ballots are so restrictive.

What makes Pennsylvania unique, however - and suggests that something has gone seriously wrong here in the birthplace of America - is that the shortage of choices has been effectively imposed by the courts. The state's courts have shut out minor-party candidates by allowing Republicans and Democrats to collect large money judgments from anyone who attempts to challenge the major parties.

This first happened in 2004, when Democrats retained the law firm Reed Smith to challenge nomination petitions filed by independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and his running mate, Peter Miguel Camejo. After invalidating more than 30,000 Nader-Camejo signatures on dubious and highly technical grounds - for example, because signers used informal names such as "Bill" instead of "William," or because their current and registered addresses did not match - Commonwealth Court removed the candidates from the ballot. Then it ordered them to pay their challengers more than $80,000 in litigation costs.

It happened again in 2006, when another firm retained by Democrats, Thorp, Reed & Armstrong, challenged Green Party Senate candidate Carl Romanelli's nomination petitions. Commonwealth Court tossed out tens of thousands of petition signatures on flimsy technicalities, bounced Romanelli off the ballot, and ordered him, too, to pay his challengers more than $80,000.

Requiring candidates to pay such costs violates landmark Supreme Court decisions of the civil rights era prohibiting states from imposing poll taxes, filing fees, and other mandatory financial burdens on voters and candidates. As the high court observed more than four decades ago in striking down Virginia's poll tax, "It has long been established that a State may not impose a penalty upon those who exercise a right guaranteed by the Constitution." That explains why the Nader-Camejo and Romanelli judgments are unprecedented.