As previously noted, the Alabama Libertarian Party sued the Secretary of State last year over the state’s policy of giving a free list of registered voters to ballot-qualified parties, but not to parties trying to get on the ballot. Libertarian Party of Alabama v Merrill, m.d., 2:19cv-69.
The Secretary of State has deposed all of the party’s plaintiffs, which is expensive. Now the Secretary of State has hired a political science professor and is paying her $300 per hour to defend the state law. However, the professor is only charging $150 per hour for time spent travelling. The professor’s report says that major parties perform useful functions for society, whereas generally minor parties do not.
None of the case law on this issue ever considered the concept that major parties are more useful than minor parties, and all other lawsuits on this issue have resulted in a win for the minor party or independent candidate who filed the case. The U.S. Supreme Court itself summarily affirmed a 3-judge U.S. District Court decision from New York in 1970 that said if the state gives the major parties a free list of the registered voters, it must also provide it for unqualified parties that are about to petition to get on the ballot.
The Secretary of State of Alabama could probably furnish the list of registered voters to the Libertarian Party with virtually no cost to the state whatsoever. Nowadays lists of registered voters are electronic files. But the Secretary of State would rather spend taxpayer dollars than do anything to help the Libertarian Party get on the ballot.
New Gen Sherman needed to liberate STONE AGE AL regime.
Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill is a Republican. Is anybody still surprised about this?
Also — COMMAND ORDERS from Oval office in Devil City — NO LPs on ballots ???
It is really disgusting when government officials cling to obviously bad, and unconstitutional, laws like this.
This reminds me of how the SOS in Pennsylvania is grasping at straws to keep tbe ban on out-of-state petition circulators going for major party primary petitions. This law makes it harder for Democrats and Republicans who are not “the chosen ones” by the party machines to get on tbe ballot.
The SOS ought to be forced to pay the legal fees out of his own pocket.
It just occurred to me that if Sanders gets the Democratic nomination, then both the Republican and Democratic candidates will have been former members of minor parties. Sanders with the Liberty Union party and Trump with the Reform party.
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single instance, other than Trump in 2016, of a former minor party member going on to get the nomination of a major party. I’m sure it must have happened before, though. But having both major party candidates be former minor party members might be a first.
1854-1860 Rise of the Elephants out of the wreckage of several minor parties.
Jim- I believe Bernie Sanders was also a member of the Socialist Workers Party at one time.
He was. He was even a presidential elector for them.
“Jim- I believe Bernie Sanders was also a member of the Socialist Workers Party at one time.”
Casual Observer, one of this website’s most astute and witty commentators, is absolutely correct. Bernie Sanders, in an inexplicably mystifying way, was a presidential elector for the then-Trotskyist leaning Socialist Workers Party in Vermont in 1980 — a complete non-factor in that year’s presidential election and a party that was way, way out of the American political mainstream.
A number of leading activists on the American Left wondered at the time why Bernie didn’t throw his support to the much more viable left-leaning Citizens Party that year — a party that polled 234,000 votes against Carter and Reagan and was led by environmentalist Dr. Barry Commoner, a pro-environment, pro-working class party, a precursor of sorts to the Green Party, that included almost every leading progressive activist in the country.
Bernie sought to undermine them because he wasn’t the center of attention in that election. That’s sad, but true.
Just as he has subsequently — and consistently — refused to support Vermont’s fledgling Progressive Party and has totally ignored the Green Party in later years, the answer was simple. The Citizens Party ticket wasn’t about him. It wasn’t all about Bernie.
He’s every bit as much of a self-consumed narcissist as Donald J. Trump, the man he hopes to unseat in November.
Like a Huey Long demagogue,he promises things that he knows he can never deliver.
Like President Trump, Bernie Sanders is all about Bernie Sanders.
The last thing this country needs is a choice between two self-centered and self-promoting, inflexible narcissists totally consumed by themselves.
One is more than enough.
America deserves better than a couple of delusional megalomaniacal characters interested more in themselves than the country’s best interests. One is already bankrupting and destroying the country. The other will do so if given the chance. One is already running trillion dollar deficits. The other will saddle us with $50-60 trillion in new spending over the next decade alone — forever making America’s younger generations debt slaves to Wall Street and the investor class.
The American electorate deserves an alternative to these two “my way or the highway” candidates — neither of whom gives a damn about anybody but themselves.
The United States can do better, much better.
Well said Mr. Richardson… VERY well said indeed!
DGR for op editor at NYT, Wapo, LAT, CNN, etc. ???
By Nov 2020–
USA debt – about 25 TRILL
S/L debt – about 15 TRILL
TOTAL – about 40 TRILL — of which about $ 12 TRILL owed to foreign regimes [mostly USA debt – since 1982 – senile Reagan regime].
See olde bankrupt Brit/French *empires* — due to wars/welfare.