On August 29, Faye Coffield, an independent candidate for U.S. House in Georgia’s 4th district, filed a ballot access case in federal court. Coffield v Handel, 1:08-cv-2755, northern district.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s 5% (of the number of registered voters) petition requirement in 1971. However, at the time, the Court said that since a statewide petition had succeeded in both 1968 and 1970, the procedure couldn’t be that difficult. However, for U.S. House, no petitioning candidate has met the 5% requirement since 1964, when an independent did it. Back then, the petitions were due in October and weren’t checked. Also U.S. House boundaries did not split counties. It is always tough to get good petition validity when U.S. House districts are as complicated as they are in Georgia these days. Most voters don’t know which U.S. House district they live in, so the validity rate for such petitions is poor.
The U.S. Supreme Court said in 1974 that “there is no litmus test” to determine if a ballot access law is constitutional or not, but said one way to know is to see how often the law is used. Justice Scalia’s concurrence in Crawford v Marion County Election Board earlier this year again mentioned that 1974 test.
Separate is NOT equal.
Brown v. Bd of Ed 1954
NOT brought up in ALL the MORON ballot access cases in the Supremes since 1968 — a mere 40 years of USELESS MORON so-called lawyers.
All too often, justices seem to have a blind spot when it comes to the constitutional rights of non-major party voters/candidates.
Even the more fair-minded justices, seemed to suggest that they were comfortable with a threshold at around 5%.
That makes little sense when research suggests that such a threshold all but eliminates the ability of citizens to exercise their liberty interests in the political process outside of the two major parties.
It would seem to me that the threhold should probably be lower.
As for the boundaries of Congressional districts, it just isn’t Georgia that has problems. My own town is split in between the 1st CD and the 3rd CD. This often results in signs for each of the candidates being in the wrong district. If the majors can get mixed up in this tiny point, I can see why an independent petition for Congress would fail. The only solutions to this are to lower the number of sigs needed (1% of voters seems good) and to make CD boundaries constant with local geography.