On November 27, 2006, the Oregon Democratic Party intervened in a pending federal lawsuit, for the purpose of supporting the law passed in 2005 in Oregon that makes it illegal for primary voters to sign an independent candidate’s petition. The case is Wasson v Bradbury, 06-cv-6205.
The brief uses the term “one man, one vote” and claims that the law making it illegal for primary voters to sign for an independent petition is required to defend the principle of “one man, one vote”. It says, “It is hard to imagine a rule more closely tailored to the ‘one person, one vote’ purpose than the one-nomination rule embodied in ORS 254.069.”
“One man, one vote” was coined in South Africa in 1960. It means that each voter should be treated equally. “One man, one vote” is not violated when a state lets all voters make multiple nominations. The law in 48 states (all but Texas and Oregon), lets all voters make multiple nominations. Therefore, all voters are being treated equally by those 48 states. It is logically absurd that any attorney should claim that the policy of 48 states violates “one man, one vote”, since “one man, one vote” has been the law of the land in the U.S. since 1964, when the Supreme Court required equal populations in legislative and congressional districts.
“One man, one vote” was the also absurd argument in the Baker v. Carr case, when the court strangely ruled that a state cannot have a bicameral legislature equivalent to that of Congress.
That is, states couldn’t have one house based on population, the other based on geographical boundaries.
“One man, one vote” should also mean, I think, that if one man prefers someone other than a candidate sanctioned by the corrupt old parties, he should have the legal right to another candidate, even if that candidate should be in — gasp! — one of the new parties.
My experience and understanding in NY was that anybody who signed another nominating petition could not sign another. What is the standard or doctrine in these incidents/cases ?
Presumably ‘ballot access’ parties could logically have so many candidates competing for positions which could in effect block independents seeking nomination by virtue of the fact that all the signatures were theoretically collected prior to that independent candidate even stepping out the door. That is, if 100 candidates from multiple parties collected 5K each a district could have 500K signatures already collected without the independent even having the ability to collect. That is also if there is a staggered collection period. This logical absurdity is never addressed by the courts.
Actually, “one man one vote” doesn’t exist in this country at the presidential level and never has, because of our federal system whereby we have 51 separate presidential elections, some of which are far more important than others depending on (1) the electoral votes involved, and (2) the relative strength of the two major parties, given our winner-take-all system. For example, one vote cast in a state with only three electoral votes that is heavily tilted towards either the Republican or Democratic party is a vote that may as well not even be cast, whereas a vote cast in a heavily populated state that has a close race between the Republican and Democratic parties carries signficantly more weight.
Only a system with no electoral college, whereby the president is elected nationally by direct popular vote, would truly be “one man, one vote.”