As noted in a blog post below, on March 20, a U.S. District Court in Connecticut said that the lawsuit Green Party of Connecticut v Garfield must go to trial. However, the March 20 order is not just a simple procedural matter; it is a 49-page careful analysis of whether states can substantially discriminate against non-Democrats and non-Republicans, in the matter of public funding. Here is the decision. The substantive parts start on page 29.
Noteworthy quotes are, “The Connecticut General Assembly had no obligation to pass a law that levels the playing field, but the legislature is not free to pass a law that further slants the playing field.” Also, “The size of the 10%-15%-20% (petition) thresholds is not as problematic as the fact that thresholds (i.e., petitions) apply only to minor party candidates in the first instance. Plaintiffs argue that it is unfair to impose additional qualifying requirements only on minor party candidates because, in one-party-dominant districts, the minor party candidate’s chances to win the general election as are good as, or better than, the token (or nonexistent) major party candidate, yet the token major party candidate is presumptively entitled to the full complement of public funds, whereas the minor party candidate must show additional ‘modicums of support.’ That argument is persuasive. Indeed, in those districts, major party candidates have proven to be just as capable of running hopeless candidacies, or no candidacies at all, as minor party candidates. Defendants have suggested no good reason why the legislature sought to protect the public fisc from hopeless minor party candidacies, on the one hand, while spending significant sums of money on hopeless major party candidacies, on the other.”
Very interesting indeed. I’ve brought up this point to people numerous times when they use the tired old wasted vote argument. Strangely, for people who are obsessed with only voting for candidates who have a chance of winning, it’s not a waste to vote for candidates like George McGovern ’72 or Walter Mondale ’84, neither of whom had a prayer of winning most states’ electoral votes, let alone the whole election. This is because they were major party nominees, and the psychology, bizarre though it may be, slants in their favor. In terms of the nuts and bolts of “wasting your vote on someone who isn’t going to win,” however, because of the current winner-take-all nature of electoral votes, McGovern/Mondale-type major party candidates have no more chance of winning the presidency than any given 3rd party candidate does, so there was no “additional waste” in voting for, say, Benjamin Spock in ’72 or Sonia Johnson in ’84.
A fine piece of reasoning by this court.
Laws such as those passed in CT (and praised by folks like Bill Moyers) are more dangerous than a system with no public financing at all. They will ensure the major parties become permanent guardians to running for office because it will only be through them that one can hope to make “electability” affordable.