On July 7, the attorney for the Washington state Democratic Party sent this letter to the Washington Attorney General:
“Last Thursday all counsel received an order from the 9th Circuit requesting supplemental briefing in connection with the State’s pending appeal of the injunction against implementation of I-872 that was entered by Judge Zilly in 2005. As is evident, the appeals of the State and Grange have not been fully resolved. The State has not requested Judge Zilly to modify his earlier injunction.
“When Secretary of State Reed first proposed to implement the Top Two Primary via emergency powers and without regard to Judge Zilly’s injunction, the Democratic Party responded on April 22, 2008 by noting: ‘It seems to us that it would have been better had you decided to wait until Judge Zilly had decided how to modify the existing injunction related to I-872 and then determined what, if any, steps to implement I-872 in 2008 would be appropriate. We hope that you will reconsider whether you have committed the resources of your office in a prudent fashion in connection with I-872.’
“Unfortunately, the Secretary elected to continue on his course of action asserting that the challenge to I-872 had been fully resolved. The 9th Circuit’s order confirms that the litigation pending since 2005 is not over. The injunction entered in that case against implementing I-872 is still in effect. The State has made no effort to modify or vacate it. Proceeding with the planned August primaries and November elections in violation of this injunction will expose all of the results to challenge, potentially wasting significant taxpayer resources on elections that have to be redone.
“We urge you once again to reconsider the course of action the State is taking and continue to follow the existing Open (Montana) Primary law until such time, if ever, as the validity of I-872 is fully and finally upheld.”
The EVIL party hacks throw up more EVIL junk smoke.
Translation:
Never mind the rule of law. I know what’s best for YOU!
Sorry – where in the Constitution does it say that party hack *small* subgroups of ALL PUBLIC Electors have some magic *right* to get their party hack candidates on the PUBLIC ballots in GENERAL elections ???
Perhaps a million party hack candidates on the ballots in a regime having a million voters (with each ballot as big as a large telephone book) — so that a party hack gets elected with a mighty 2 or 3 votes ???
Sorry – what part of the Constitution prohibits a regime from having only 2 candidates on the ballots for a single office — such that a MAJORITY of the voters elects a candidate — i.e. a Democracy result ???
For the many New Age clueless — Democracy = Majority Rule, directly or indirectly (nothing more BUT nothing less).
This one more legal mess has been created by the MORON party hack Supremes and their perversion of the 1st Amendment since 1968 — which has about ZERO to do with BALLOT ACCESS for PUBLIC ballots in PUBLIC elections.
See the book about the origin of the U.S.A. Bill of Rights – Sources of Our Liberties edited by Richard L. Perry (American Bar Association, 1959).
Sorry — ballot access was NOT the problem that produced the 1st Amdt.
Any ballot access stuff comes under the Equal Protection Clause in 14th Amdt, Sec. 1.
Gee – did the radical Republicans in 1866 in the gerrymander Congress want even Republicans to have *equal* ballot access laws in the ex-slave States ???
Article One (not the First Amendment), as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, says neither Congress nor any state made add to the qualifications to run for Congress, beyond those qualifications that are in the U.S. Constitution.
Congress has said that congressional election day is in November. Anyone who possesses the qualifications listed in the U.S. Constitution has a right to run in “the” election. The Washington state August primary is not an election because no one is elected in August. Even if a candidate gets 100% of the votes in the August primary, he or she is not elected at that point, and must run in November and face a potential write-in opponent. The August primary is nothing but a very severe ballot access barrier, requiring (on the average) 30% voter support to pass that barrier. It is unconstitutional under several US Supreme Court ballot access decisions.
#3: “Sorry – what part of the Constitution prohibits a regime from having only 2 candidates on the ballots for a single office — such that a MAJORITY of the voters elects a candidate — i.e. a Democracy result ???”
You won’t find the word “democracy” in the Constitution, as the Founding Fathers were very suspicious of democracy and majoritarianism. That was why, e.g., they established (1) indirect election of the president, and (2) equal representation in the Senate for each state, regardless of population.
As Richard notes in #4, the Constitution does indeed prohibit limiting the general election ballot for Congress to two candidates per office.
As the US Supreme Court has said, “Representative democracy… is unimaginable without the ability of citizens to band together in promoting among the electorate candidates who espouse their political views.”
The Supremes wrote —
Footnote 7
It is true that parties may no longer indicate their nominees on the ballot, but that is unexceptionable: The First Amendment does not give political parties a right to have their nominees designated as such on the ballot. See Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party, 520 U. S. 351, 362–363 (1997) (“We are unpersuaded, however, by the party’s contention that it has a right to use the ballot itself to send a particularized message, to its candidate and to the voters, about the nature of its support for the candidateâ€). Parties do not gain such a right simply because the State affords candidates the opportunity to indicate their party preference on the ballot. “Ballots serve primarily to elect candidates, not as forums for political expression.†Id., at 363.
WASHINGTON STATE GRANGE v. WASHINGTON STATE REPUBLICAN PARTY, 552 U.S. ___ (2008), Slip opinion pp 10-11.
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I.E. Party hacks can ban together all they want — but NOT get their party hack candidates on general election ballots — without going thru a process to reduce the number of general election candidates.
Copy the above and stick it on your wall.
Folks can dig up the Supremes quotes about getting majority winners for single offices.
How many ANTI-Democracy EVIL monsters are on this list ???
Folks who just love having Stalin / Hitler minority rule regimes ???
The EVIL elitists in the top secret 1787 Federal Convention let slavery continue in the U.S.A. — and stuck the 3 gerrymander minority rule systems (House, Senate, Electoral College) on top of the State gerrymander minority rule systems.
I.E. The EVIL BIG LIES about the regime.
Sorry — the gerrymander EVIL Empire has no clothes — regardless of brainwashed MORONS repeating the junk they learned at ages 8 to 16 like programmed robots.
Sorry – California is NOT Wyoming.
P.R. (a major advance in *political science*) came along in the 1840s — about 70 years too late ???
NO P.R. in 1860 — result — 620,000 dead Americans in 1861-1865 due to the EVIL gerrymander elites.
What loud mouthed EVIL gerrymander incumbent will shoot off his/her mouth and cause Civil WAR II ???
One dug up quote about majority winners.
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Ohio makes a variety of other arguments to support its very restrictive election laws. It points out, for example, that, if three or more parties are on the ballot, it is possible that no one party would obtain 50% of the vote, and the runner-up might have been preferred to the plurality winner by a majority of the voters. [[[Concededly, the State does have an interest in attempting to see that the election winner be the choice of a majority of its voters.]]] But to grant the State power to keep all political parties off the ballot until they have enough members to win would stifle the growth of all new parties working to increase their strength from year to year. Considering these Ohio laws in their totality, this interest cannot justify the very severe restrictions on voting and associational rights which Ohio has imposed.
Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, 32 (1968) [[[brackets added]]] — the first *modern* ballot access case in the Supremes.
The party hack Supremes have yet to detect that each election is NEW and has ZERO to do with any prior election — result — the nonstop election law chaos generated by the party hack Supremes in the lower courts since 1962 — 46 years and counting.
Time now to put Democracy into the Constitution ???
I.E. amend Art. IV, Sec. 4 to say that —
The United States shall guaranteed to each State that its form of government shall be a Democracy [and not a party hack gerrymander monarchy / oligarchy].
and even add —
The government of the United States of America shall be a Democracy [and not a party hack gerrymander monarchy / oligarchy].
Waiting for more childish party hack comments from the Barney Dinosaur New Age types — who apparently love having minority rule regimes in the U.S.A. and in each State — especially in the gerrymander U.S.A. Senate.
The Supreme Court as recently as Tashjian has confirmed that primaries are an integral part of the electoral process for US Representatives and Senators, in particular with respect to the qualifications of the voters.
“The fundamental purpose underlying Article I, 2, cl. 1, that ‘[t]he House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen . . . by the People of the several States,’ like the parallel provision of the Seventeenth Amendment, applies to the entire process by which federal legislators are chosen. ‘Where the state law has made the primary an integral part of the procedure of choice, or where in fact the primary effectively controls the choice,’ the requirements of Article I, 2, cl. 1, and the Seventeenth Amendment apply to primaries as well as to general elections.”
Subsequently, Nebraska applied the Tashjian decision and modified their primaries for US Senators and Representatives.
The qualifications of Representatives in Article 1 are mere elaborations of from whom the People may choose. Without the People choosing their Representatives, the House of Representative and the US Constitution itself are meaningless.
In US Term Limits v Thornton it wasn’t the candidates who suffered a disability, it was the voters who might have voted for them who were restricted.
If you are correct in your assessment that Congress by setting a date, has also introduced a manner restriction in that voters may voter for any constitutionally-qualified candidates on that date, then ALL primaries, partisan or non-, open, closed, semi-open, semi-closed, pick-a-party, top-2, or blanket are invalid for congressional and senatorial elections.
Then, under your interpretation, if a voter goes to the polls in November and is prevented from voting for a person who is 25 years or older who has been a US Citizen for 7 years, and who inhabits the voter’s State (on the day of the election) merely because that person had not had the most votes in some other election earlier in the year, then the State has imposed an additional qualification.
Even if the candidates in a primary “voluntarily” committed to not-running in the November election it would be suspect, especially if that consent was a requirement for their inclusion on the primary ballot in the first place.
On the other hand, if by setting the date, Congress has done nothing more than set a final date to (attempt to) determine a winner, then the States have not introduced an additional qualification.
Do you think the US Supreme Court meant that it was too plain for argument that a State may insist that political parties disqualify otherwise qualified persons from being elected?
Partisan primaries are not elections. They are procedures by which parties choose nominees. The US signed the Copenhagen Meeting Document (part of the Helsinki Accords). All the signatory nations pledged that they would follow a policy of “a clear separation between the State and political parties; in particular, political parties will not be merged with the State.”
This is getting almost funny.
ALL of the voters in WA State are nominating candidates via the top 2 primary [NOT just party hack voters] — i.e. putting the 2 candidate NAMES on the general election ballots.
How many of the State constitutions have a FIXED date for general elections — to NOT have statutory machinations by the party hacks ???
NO fixed general election date in the U.S.A. Constitution since it was not certain when or if 9 States in Art. VII would ratify the Constitution — thus the Art. I, Sec. 4 language — related to the Prez date in Art II, Sec. 1, para. 4.
What would be the magic percentage of ALL voters necessary to have *enough* candidates on general election ballots (or even primary election ballots) for a single office ???
0.1, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 33.4 ????
Sorry — NO such number in the Constitution at the moment.
See also 14th Amdt, Sec. 2 — totally screwed up by the courts since 1868.
I.E. NO allowed write-ins = a blatant 14-2 violation.
The U.S.A. Constitution is NOT a mystical document coming down from outer space and another dimension.
The English language in the Constitution is pretty easy to understand — WITH some political – legal history background — except for the party hack Supremes — who love to mystify every word in the Constitution and its amendments.
Article One of the US Constitution gives Congress the authority to write or supercede state election laws, relating to congressional elections. Congress exercised its power and told the states to hold congressional elections in November. States are permitted to have a run-off in December if that state wants to guarantee the winner got 50%. In recent decades, Georgia and Louisiana have held such December run-offs.
There is no function to the Washington state August primary except to eliminate candidates from the November ballot. The August primary could easily be dispensed with. It would save taxpayer dollars and ease voter fatigue.
2 U.S.C. Sec. 7. The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year, is established as the day for the election, in each of the States and Territories of the United States, of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress commencing on the 3d day of January next thereafter.
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THE day — THE election.
I see NO mention of any runoff general election — regardless of any party hack Supremes opinion on the subject.
2 U.S.C. Sec. 7 above blatantly violates the *noon* in 20th Amdt, Sec. 1.
How many blatantly unconstitutional laws are there on the books — due to reckless gerrymander party hacks ???
Richard #12: the runoff doesn’t have to be in December. Georgia’s ’92 US Senate runoff between Paul Coverdell and Wyche Fowler, e.g., was held two days before Thanksgiving. I’m assuming GA’s runoffs are still held 3 weeks after the general election.
Now that Louisiana has restored party primaries for its congressional elections, it will, of course, no longer have runoffs following federal election day.
Arizona had a runoff general election provision for a time, but I don’t think it applied to congressional elections. Since no one got 50% in the November 1990 governor’s election, there was a runoff in February 1991.
As to Washington state: what about the contention that, if the “top two” is not held in August, the state will have to revert to separate (“pick-a-party”) primaries in August?
What part of the Constitution magicially requires ANY party hack primaries — especially paid for by taxpayers who may oppose everything that a party hack party stands for and does ???
i.e. like having commie party taxpayers paying for nazi primaries and nazi taxpayers paying for commie primaries ???
The whole mess is due to the party hack Supremes with ALL of their screwed up illogical ballot access cases since 1968.
NO primaries needed.
EQUAL nominating petitions (to show the *preliminary support* that the Supremes rave about) for direct general election ballot access.
P.R. legislative
A.V. nonpartisan executive/judicial
— pending more advanced head to head math.
Way too difficult for party hack MORONS to understand.
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What sayeth any party hack about —
[[[Concededly, the State does have an interest in attempting to see that the election winner be the choice of a majority of its voters.]]] in #7 above ???
The Supremes are not good enough party hacks or were on 1968 hippie drugs when they approved such language ???
# 14 writes —
As to Washington state: what about the contention that, if the “top two†is not held in August, the state will have to revert to separate (â€pick-a-partyâ€) primaries in August?
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What is going to stop the Top 2 WA state primary in Aug. 2008 ???
An earthquake, a S.R. lawsuit, folks from outer space ???
Absentee ballots already being printed and mailed out — including to Iraq and Afghanistan troops (defending *Democracy* in such areas and also the U.S.A.) ???
SORRY — way too late for any party hacks to stop the WA top 2 primary from happening ???
Which Supreme may have his/her summer vacation disturbed by a party hack in WA State ???
Has the US Supreme Court issued any decisions remotely saying that partisan primaries are not “elections” because that would be in violation of the Helsinki Accords?
Is the whole of the gossamer thread that your argument hangs on that we don’t know what Congress meant when they set the uniform congressional election date in 1872 (and actually achieved 100% compliance 86 years later), but once they ratified the treaty they locked in that peculiar definition?
And even if your argument were adopted what would that do to partisan primary elections as conducted in the United States? That’s a pretty phony independence when you tell the private organization when and where to make their nominations, and who may participate in making the nominations, and just so you get it right, we’ll maintain your membership rosters and actually conduct the procedures.
The US Supreme Court has never ruled that there can not be preliminary procedures, including elections, that eliminate some candidates from appearing on the November ballot.
In Foster v. Love, Louisiana ran afoul of the law because they weren’t holding any election on the designated date. A voter might go to his designated polling place, and find it was being used for a feed store, church, or some other mundane activity.
The Love party argued before the US Supreme Court that everything would have been fine if they could just have had a write-in vote. They just wanted a chance to vote for or against Billy Tauzin. Louisiana’s AG actually argued that it would have been OK to have the election in August and the runoff in September because Louisiana’s manner of having elections was so novel.
Since Louisiana made no attempt to hold an election in November and actually certified its winners of not having been elected in November it was a slam dunk decision that even Justice Souter could be entrusted with.
If Congress really cared, they could have not seated the representatives from Louisiana, or they could regulate the primary process as well.
How does the August primary cause voter fatigue? There tongue gets tired from licking the ballot envelopes? Writer’s cramp from filling out the ballot? They get tired of listening to political advertisements?
Is a February primary better because it lets the voters rest up before November?
#17, third paragraph: the state has some say-so because it pays the costs of party primaries.
In states that do not mandate open primaries, it’s up to each party as to whether independents vote in its primary. Unless the state prohibits it, a party may even invite members of opposing parties to vote in its primary.
In advance of the first round of Washington’s “top two,” each party could conduct a primary. No party will, of course, because of the expense involved.
#19 The party hacks can NOT afford a newspaper want ad type cheap ballot and have party hack voters mail it in to be scanned — or now have some genius party hack internet ballots (with national security levels of protection) ???
Heaven help the poor suffering party hacks.
Perhaps a perty hack can win a govt lottery and pay for a party hack primary (with or without independents allowed to vote) ???
Still waiting for a party hack answer to the #15 question about majority winners.
1. Nominations for PUBLIC offices is PUBLIC business by PUBLIC Electors.
2. Internal party hack stuff is party hack business — NOT to be controlled by a government.
See the 1989 Eu opinion by the Supremes — that detected that 1 is NOT 2 and vice versa.
When will the party hack Supremes detect a party hack – State TOTAL separation — just like the church – state TOTAL separation in the First Amdt (which also has been screwed up by the Supremes) ???
Is being a party hack part of a New Age religion ???
Do you guys have a recommendation section, i’d like to suggest some stuff