Philadelphia Inquirer publishes CCD legal counsel Oliver Hall’s column demonstrating that voter choice was suppressed in Pennsylvania’s November 2, 2010 general election, as a result of the state’s unique practice of imposing unconstitutional costs and attorneys’ fees upon candidates who defend nomination petitions that they are required by law to submit. See our Media page for the article.
#Pennsylvania #op-ed
CCD files lawsuit in federal district court for North Dakota to challenge the constitutionality of a state law that bars winners of the North Dakota Libertarian Party’s primary election from appearing on the general election ballot, because they did not receive a specified minimum number of votes. The plaintiffs are the North Dakota Libertarian Party and three of its candidates for state legislature – Richard Ames, Thommy Passa and Anthony Stewart – each of whom was denied placement on North Dakota’s November 2, 2010 general election ballot, despite being the undisputed winner of the party’s primary election in June. Read the Bismarck Tribune coverage.
Case: 3:10-cv-00064-RRE-KKK (Libertarian Party of North Dakota v. Jaeger)
The Kansas City Star publishes CCD Director Theresa Amato’s op-ed calling for a revamped Federal Election Commission to solve the agency’s “partisan paralysis.” The solution? Transform the FEC from a “bi-partisan” to a “non-partisan” agency by appointing independents and minor party members – not just Republicans and Democrats – to serve as Commissioners.
CCD joins lawsuit filed on behalf of write-in candidates and voters in Washington, D.C., to require elections officials to report vote totals for each qualified write-in candidate. Currently, D.C. only includes the total number of all write-in votes in its official vote tally, effectively disenfranchising write-in voters. The case is Libertarian Party, et al. v. District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics, Civ. No. 09-5836.
CCD Director Theresa Amato will join a panel discussion at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., about George Mason University Professor of Economics James Bennett’s book Not Invited to the Party: How the Demopublicans Have Rigged the System and Left Independents Out in the Cold. Amato’s book, Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, was published by New Press in June 2009. Professor Bennett will also be joined by former Federal Election Commission member Hans A. von Spakovsky, in a panel moderated by John Samples of the Cato Institute. The event is at 12 PM with a luncheon to follow.
CCD submits comments to Maine Legislature’s Joint Committee on Legal and Veteran Affairs, urging adoption of safeguards to protect candidates’ rights in proposed legislation regulating circulation of minor party and independent candidates’ nomination petitions. The proposed legislation would require petition circulators to swear that they “personally witnessed” the signing of each signature on a petition – an unnecessarily strict standard that invites unfounded but irrefutable allegations of fraud in the petitions.
Update: On June 4, 2009, Maine Governor John Baldacci signed Bill LD 1169 into law, incorporating a reform proposed by CCD Director John Branson, which clarifies that a single improperly “witnessed” signature on a nomination petition does not justify invalidation of the entire petition sheet. If this provision had been clear during the 2008 general election, independent senatorial candidate Herbert J. Hoffman would not have been removed from the ballot
CCD joins Emergency Application for a Stay of Enforcement, submitted to the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Herbert J. Hoffman, independent candidate for United States Senate in Maine’s 2008 general election. On July 28, 2008, the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine denied Hoffman listing on Maine’s ballot, even though all parties conceded that he had submitted a petition with enough valid signatures, because he could not prove that three particular signatures had been signed in his “presence,” according to the unspecified legal definition of that term.
#SCOTUS #Maine #ballotaccess #independent #stayofenforcement
CCD submits amicus brief to United States Supreme Court in support of Petition for Certiorari filed on behalf of Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties of Pennsylvania in Rogers v. Cortes. The Petitioners challenge the Third Circuit’s decision inRogers, which upheld Pennsylvania’s requirement that they submit nomination petitions with signatures equal in number to two percent of the vote cast for any winning candidate for statewide office in the previous election. CCD’s amicus brief argues that the requirement severely burdens Petitioners by subjecting minor party candidates to grossly unconstitutional financial burdens of $80,000 or more, by forcing minor party voters to cast write-in votes that the state fails to count, and by terminating Petitioners’ status as qualified political parties in Pennsylvania.