Minnesota election law requires qualified parties to file their presidential elector candidates, and an equal number of alternates, by August 29. The Republican Party has complied with this law. However, when it first nominated presidential elector candidates earlier this year, it forgot it was supposed to also nominate alternates. See this story.
When the party realized this, it called a meeting of the state committee, nominated alternates, and forwarded them to the Secretary of State by the legal deadline. However, the meeting that was called to choose alternates was in violation of the party bylaws, which say a 10-day notice is required for meetings. The party ignored that bylaw because of the time emergency. Thanks to Jeff Becker for the link.
Richard, do you keep a database of cases like this where the duopolists flout the by-laws (and/or acual laws) they passed and let themselves off the hook?
No. Generally the public would never even know those instances.
Donnie and Tim are showing up here:
http://candidates.sos.state.mn.us/CandidateFilingResults.aspx?county=0&municipality=0&schooldistrict=0&hospitaldistrict=0&level=1&party=0&federal=True&judicial=True&executive=True&senate=True&representative=True&title=&office=0&candidateid=0
In some states, political parties are required by statute to comply with their own bylaws.
Something similar happened in Texas in 2008. Both the Democrats and Republicans missed the deadline to turn in their slate of electors. The Libertarians are the only party that complied (and I was one of their electors FWIW.) Of course some judge let them off the hook and there were no repercussions.
Two interesting points to this happening:
1) Minor parties are required to have all of their electors and alternates identified and listed on the petitions they circulate. So they’re forced to have that complete months before the Republicans and Democrats are. Before this was just hypothetical, but the deadline for petitions was August 23, and Republicans had until August 29 to apparently just make up any alternates they want. That’s a clear discrimination of timing that serves no public purpose.
2) The same MN Secretary of State ruled that minor parties could not petition with a specific set of electors and alternates and then replace one of those alternates later. His office stated they would need to restart the entire petitioning process with the new electors/alternates. His reasoning was that the people signing the petition signed for specific electors and alternates, and changing it after the fact would not respect their intent. Meanwhile, the Republican state committee is being allowed to just appoint any ten people they choose as alternates, independent of any vote by the members of their party.
The story you linked to includes this link:
https://twitter.com/RachelSB/status/768837025860558848
The author of the tweet is Rachel Stassen-Berger, Harold Stassen’s granddaughter. She is the political reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
The nomination of candidates for PUBLIC office is PUBLIC business — regardless of the LAWLESS robot party HACKS in the various regimes.
Internal party HACK stuff is private. See the 1989 Eu case.