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On November 6, the Tea Party qualified as a party for the Florida ballot. It should not be confused with the Boston Tea Party, which was already a ballot-qualified party in Florida. See this story.

It is very easy for a group to qualify itself in Florida. Florida now has 32 qualified parties. The vast majority of them have never run a candidate for anything, because (except for president) the filing fees for candidates are so high.

On November 6, 2009, Ralph Nader again asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to rehear the 2004 case over whether it was proper and constitutional for that Court to order him to pay approximately $80,000 to the people who challenged his 2004 petition. In re Nomination Paper of Nader, 94 MAP 2008. Here is the succinct 5-page brief, which makes two points that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has never addressed: (1) the people who challenged Nader’s petition did so in a criminal conspiracy, and some of them have already pleaded guilty; (2) the U.S. Supreme Court, and lower courts, have established over the last 44 years that states cannot charge candidates for the costs of administering elections, except for the limited purpose of keeping ballots uncrowded.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has one new member, elected earlier this week, although she hasn’t taken the oath of office yet.

With a House health care vote looming, President Obama discusses the Fort Hood tragedy in his weekly address.

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The House health care reform bill "has taken more twists and turns and has zig-zagged its way through more Democratic districts than the Mississippi River," The Hill reports.

"And after a month's worth of legislative wrangling and deal-making, the bill is approaching its final destination: a vote on final passage, expected sometime before the sun rises on Sunday. Pressing toward dawn on Saturday, the Rules committee passed a rule after nearly 12 hours that would set up a vote on the health care bill at 6 p.m."

"No Congress has ever come this close to the goal - first proposed by President Theodore Roosevelt - of providing universal health insurance."

House Democratic leaders "have broken through the abortion impasse holding up their sweeping health care overhaul, a development leadership aides said put Democrats on track to pass the measure on Saturday," Roll Call reports.

"The deal hands a major win to abortion-rights opponents by green-lighting an up-or-down vote on a proposal by Reps. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Brad Ellsworth (D-IB) to bar plans that offer abortions from new health insurance exchanges. The ban would extend to a public insurance option that House Democrats have included in their package."

"The amendment will likely pass with support from Republicans, forcing the majority of Democrats, who support abortion rights, to swallow hard in voting for the package on final passage. Democrats on the House Rules Committee who favor abortion rights made their discomfort clear early Saturday morning as they debated allowing the amendment."

Here is the Libertarian Party’s response brief in Libertarian Party of New Hampshire v Gardner, the federal case over whether unqualified parties should be allowed to use stand-in presidential candidates on their petitions. Although it is short (only five pages), it has a good compendium of other federal court decisions that say in some areas of election laws, states may not discriminate against unqualified parties, relative to qualified ones. This is in response to the state’s brief, which seemed to argue that states are free to discriminate in all areas of election law, but only cited examples of cases in which unqualified parties need not be treated equally for purposes of having their members serve on election boards.