On December 13, Massachusetts Secretary of state William Galvin said that he will put William Weld and Joe Walsh on the Republican presidential primary ballot automatically, because they are discussed in news media. But he said he won’t put Rocky De La Fuente on because he isn’t discussed in the news media. De La Fuente can still get on the ballot with 2,500 signatures of registered Republicans and/or registered independents. See this story.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
I half expect somone in “the media” to mention Rocky, just to trigger the Sec of State.
Is BAN part of the *media* ???
Are the media reporting on the now many Rocky court cases part of the media ???
ALL more part of the void for vagueness stuff.
That’s so arbitrary and kind of disturbing that someone in a position of power can just concretely establish two “classes” of candidates based on media presence- something the voters have no control over.
Liam- it’s called Top Two.
How many Rocky election law cases reported in the *media* ???
see MN story — among many.
There are tiers of candidates based on past accomplishment. Bill Weld was a governor and Joe Walsh was a Congressman. Donald Trump is our president. Rocky is someone who ran in Democratic primaries and then as a Reform Party candidate and an “American Delta” Party candidate prior to running for senate in a bunch of states with both major parties. So honestly, I side with the SOS in these types of cases.
I don’t think that being discussed in the news media is really a fair criterion for the state to use. That said, though, De La Fuente is discussed in the news media quite a bit less than Weld and Walsh. I think that the Secretary of State was correct not to give him automatic access to the ballot based on the stated criterion of being discussed in the news media.
Causal Observer-
That’s not what’s happening here, Top Two is a voting system that takes the top two vote getters in a First Round of elections and sends them to a run off election between those top two. This is government getting to decide who gets to play the game in the first place before it happens, using media coverage as a barometer, not vote totals.
Yep… Top Two. Two classes of candidates (your words). Those accepted by the government and those not.
@CO,
The Top 2 are the candidates who receive the most votes.
The mainstream news media is notoriously biased, and is in bed with the ruling political establishment, so using them to establish whether or not a candidate can appear on a primary ballot does not seem fair.
Who is to say what constitutes legitimate media? Ballot Access News has covered Rocky De La Fuente, so does this count?
In Massachusetts, there are three ways for a candidate to get on the ballot of the Presidential primary: 1) the Secretary determines who are candidates based on media coverage, 2) the chair of each qualified party submits a list of candidates, and 3) by petition. The first two are admittedly subjective, but the last option provides a remedy for anyone not chosen in the other methods. This part of the ballot access law is probably the most generous part of the law in Massachusetts
Forcing some candidates to petition their way onto a primary ballot, while others can get on by the arbitrary (and possibly biased) decisions of others, does not seem fair.