Ninth Circuit Posts Audio of Montana Green Party Ballot Access Oral Argument

The Ninth Circuit website has posted the audio for the May 6 oral argument in Montana Green Party v Jacobsen, 20-35340. Listen via this link. It lasts 36 minutes. The case was filed in 2018 against the unequal distribution requirement for petitions to recognize a new party. The U.S. District Court had upheld it, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that unequal distribution requirements for statewide petitions violate “one person, one vote.”

The Montana party petition requires a certain number of signatures in each of 33 state house districts, but the number varies, even though the districts are approximately equal in population. Some districts require as few as 55 signatures; others as many as 150. No other state has such a peculiar distribution requirement.


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Ninth Circuit Posts Audio of Montana Green Party Ballot Access Oral Argument — 1 Comment

  1. The video of the arguments are here:

    https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/view_video.php?pk_vid=0000019255

    Is the New York district judge hearing a Montana case like a reverse McCloud?

    Judge Friedland seemed to think that the case was about qualifying individual district candidates, though independent candidates do face similar weird procedures.

    The plaintiffs should prepare documents showing how election of a Republican governor has changed the required signatures by district. I suspect that if you plot 2016 v. 2020 requirements you would have a negative correlation.

    The problem that the plaintiffs have is that the requirements are stupid. They incentivize maldistribution. A party that sought to gather 100 signatures in all 100 districts would collect 10,000 signatures statewide, twice the statewide total and find they didn’t meet the maldistribution standard.

    I suppose, “Your Honor, these requirements are stupid!”, is not a good legal argument is true.

    If the standards were based on total population, they might satisfy Moore v Ogilvie. The fundamental problem is that Montana House districts violate Reynolds v. Sims.

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