This year, five registered Greens ran for the Florida legislature. They were all individuals who were completely unknown to the Green Party leadership. But because the Florida law was changed in 2007 to provide that all parties (not just the parties with registration of 5%, meaning the Democrats and Republicans) nominate by primary, it was easy for anyone to register into any party and file for that party’s primary, regardless of the wishes of a minor party’s leadership.
News stories said that all five Greens had only been registered in the Green Party for a few weeks before they filed. Some had previously been registered Republican, some independent, and some had not even been previously registered. Reporters suspected that Republicans had recruited them to run so as to increase the chances that Republicans would win the legislative seats in question. That may or may not be true. In any event, none of the 5 Greens seem to have changed the identity of the winners in those 5 races. In three of the races (State Senate districts 25 and 27, and State House district 44) the Republican nominee won over 50% of the total vote. In the other two (State House districts 69 and 81), although no one received as much as 50% of the total vote, Democrats won both seats.
This serves to illustrate why political parties’ right to freedom of association in deciding who can run for partisan office in their primary is so important.
Yeah, construing the individual right to freedom of association as a collective right to exclusive dis-association can be tough to sort out.
several years ago i researched this questin and found that the US supreme Ct. upheld the right of political parties to determine who represents them. I believe the key case was in San Francisco.
The FL green party should have been able to challenge those they considered illegitimate greens but that does nt mean they wuld be successful. it depends on how their own bylaws defined their structure and membership.
But forcing all parties to hold public primaries I think would be found unconstitutional. Many, if not most states allow a political party to nominate by convention.
Freedom of association trumps all state laws to the contrary but its wuld take a lot of legal resurces to overturn laws like in Florida (assuming they have been reported correctly).
The pending lawsuit in the 6th circuit, over whether the Tennessee Democratic Party had a right to unseat someone who won its primary for State Senate, will be very important for this area of the law.
This is both an interesting and touchy subject to delve into. As someone who was involved with the formation of the California Green Party I can tell you the party governing structure was absolutely paranoid about the possibility of Steath Republicans taking out papers and Boscoing Democrats. This happened quite some time ago so I don’t remember all of the details. Bosco was the name of a Democrat member of the House who lost his seat in a close race with a Republican by a margin smaller than the vote total for the P&F Candidate.
After the Greens gained ballot status there was a large feud when it came time to writing the party’s bylaws over one particular rule. A sizable contingent wanted to include a “Closed Race Rule”. This rule would provide for a mechanism whereby permission would need to be given by the Party’s County Council to the County Registrar of Voters before papers would be distributed for each partisan race in the county. Most other parties have a similar arrangements with their County Central Committees. what this rule does is force any prospective candidate to go before the Party’s County Council/Central Committee seeking their permission to open that race.
There also was a sizable contingent of party members that felt such a rule would lead to the formation of “Kingmakers” who would stifle the ambitions of well meaning members.
The rule was eventually implemented but not without 2 compromise provisions being added. First, the rule itself had a sunset provision embedded in it that would wipe out the rule after 4 years. It was estimated the Party Structure would have the lay off the land and instantly recognize infiltrators. The second provision is the NOTA (none of the above) Rule whereby every race on the primary ballot will have a NOTA Ballot Line. This will allow the Party to conduct NOTA Campaigns against candidates they do not approve.
The close race rule was sunsetted but shortly there after the courts struck down NOTA. As it turned out in 1996 there was a Stealth Republican who wormed her way in to the Democrat Party primary in Orange County. In 2000 there was the well publicized case of Audie Bock’s election to the California Legislature as a Green and immediately defected upon taking office. But she was hardly a Stealth Candidate. She was active in the party and used her gender to grease the skids with the Feminist Types that held control over the Alameda Greens. This just goes to show you what Identity Politics is good for.
Florida should switch to a Top 2 system, with ballot qualification by individual candidate with perhaps 0.02% of the gubernatorial vote for Statewide office, and proportionate numbers for district offices based on number of districts. This would be about 1,000 for Statewide office; 40 for US representative; and 25 for Florida senate.
Let each political party establish a percentage of the qualifying number which must come from party registrants in order for a candidate to carry its party name on the election ballot. The percentage must be between 20% and 100%. A candidate will still qualify as an independent if he does not reach a party threshold.
After the petitioning period, parties may choose not to endorse a candidate, except those who meet the total qualification standard with party registrants. Non-endorsed candidates will remain on the ballot as independent candidates.
If fewer than 3 candidates qualify, the qualifying period is extended one week with the qualifying standard reduced to 0.01% of gubernatorial vote (500 for statewide office, 20 for US representative, 13 for Florida Senate). Late qualifiers will run as independents.
Same system will be used for presidential candidates.