On August 21, the Montana Supreme Court issued a one-page order, saying the Green Party should not be on the ballot. The order says the court will explain its reasoning later. Larson v State of Montana, DA 18-0414.
The only hope for the Green Party to be on the November 2018 ballot is to win its federal court case, which challenges the March 5 petition deadline, and the distribution requirement. Unlike other states with distribution requirements, the Montana distribution requirement does not treat each voter equally. The law requires signatures from each of at least 34 state house districts. But in some of those districts, the party needs as few as 50 signatures, whereas in other such districts, the party needs 150 signatures. Thus, voters in some counties have more power than voters in other districts, because a voter’s signature in some districts has three times the weight of voters in other districts. Such unequal distribution requirements have been invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts in many states.
Obvious UNEQUAL stuff in subareas of larger area —
UNEQUAL 18 new, mover in/out, dead voters in subareas.
Too many MORON/F-E-L-O-N judges to count —
who take an oath to defend the USA Const — ie the EPC in 14-1.
This link may work better:
https://supremecourtdocket.mt.gov/APP/connector/2/361/url/321Z28N_079V1ZV0W00001Y.pdf
There was enough in the case that a partisan-inclined judge could support the case of their party and claim to be fair. The justices of the Supreme Court are elected on a nonpartisan basis, but there is a Democratic majority.
You may be overstating the inequality of the signature requirements among the districts. The least number is 55 in one district, and there are more than 80 required in 96 of 100 districts. Moreover, the districts where the fewest signatures are needed, would be among the hardest to petition in winter or any season.
The Democratic Party characterized the submission of signatures by the Green Party as a flood, and the county election officials as doing yeoman work because the signatures were collected and submitted prior to early March 5. And still the petition did not meet the distribution standard, despite having almost 50% more _verified_ signatures than required for the statewide total.
There is no rational state interest in requiring a deluge of petitions that is beyond the capacity of the yeomen county election officials to handle.
The general concept of a distribution requirement is that a party make at least a modest effort in a more widespread area, rather than gather all the signatures in one area. For example, New York requires 15,000 signatures statewide, with at least 100 from half of the congressional districts (14 of 27). The statewide requirement averages 556 per congressional district, so getting 100 in 14 districts is quite modest. If a party first gathered 100 signatures in the requisite 14 districts, they would still need to gather 13,600 signatures.
Montans House districts are small (about 10,000) persons or 1/70th the population of a typical congressional districts. Yet Montana requires more signatures in 78 of its House districts than New York requires in an entire congressional district. If New York requires a modest showing of support, Montana requires an embarrassingly immodest, even obscene showing.
If it were proposed that circulators gather 50 signatures in each of the 100 districts, therefore meeting the statewide standard of 5000, it would be rejected because it was not enough in even ONE district. In fact the Green Party only turned in signatures from 47 districts, and even that was not concentrated enough.
There is also a political bias in the Montana standard, since the district requirement is based on the winning gubernatorial candidate in the district. In 2016, the Democratic candidate won statewide, so the standard in Democratic-leaning districts is higher. If the Republican candidate had won the standard in Republican-leaning districts would be higher. Thus parties which might have more support in Republican leaning areas, such as the Constitution or Libertarian parties would have a harder effort in a Republican year, while the Green Party has a harder effort in a Democratic year.
Democrats tend to do better in cities, where there may be 5 to 12 districts that signatures may be collected from. In rural areas, a district might include portions of multiple counties where collection must take place under frigid conditions. In February 2018, the last month before the collection deadline, the average high temperature in Havre was 14 degrees.The signature
https://ballotpedia.org/Moore_v._Ogilvie
See RW mention
@Demo Rep,
The disparity in population among Illinois counties was much greater than the disparity in signatures required among the approximately equal districts.
Is *EQUAL* in any LAW dictionary ???
ALL the distribution stuff is just one more scheme by ANTI-Democracy gerrymander incumbents to stop/reduce opposition — candidates and ballot issues.
Other schemes –
early deadline dates
higher petition amounts
The SCOTUS HACKS have yet to bring down the USA Const HAMMER on the skulls of the HACKS in ALL areas – USA, State and Local — Nonstop indictments and bankruptcies of the HACKS.