Georgia State Senator Gail Buckner (D-Morrow) has introduced SB 35, which requires all candidates for any district office to swear under penalty of perjury that they live in the district they seek to represent. The bill does not make an exemption for U.S. House candidates, and therefore would be unconstitutional if it were enacted. The U.S. Constitution does not require candidates for U.S. House to live in any particular district, and states are not permitted to add to the qualifications for U.S. House.
Richard:
How could it be ruled “unconstitutional” for other districts other than the U S House of Representatives? I could see the Court ruling against it if is applied against Congressional candidates, but not for a candidate for the Georgia Assembly, for example.
Do candidates for U.S. House and Senate have to live in the states they represent? (Sorry, too lazy this rainy Sunday to look it up myself!)
As to question number one, it would be ruled unconstitutional as applied to US House candidates.
As to question number two, the US Constitution says candidates for Congress must live in the state they are seeking to represent “when elected”. Courts have interpreted that to mean the residency test only applies to where the candidate is living on election day. Since ballots are printed before election day, there effectively is no residency test to run for US Congress.
And one has to look at, most notoriously, New York to see how little import voters place on a candidate’s residency, especially over the long term.
Those benighted voters have elected at least two famous, or infamous, carpetbaggers, Robert Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
Illinois, on the other hand, rejected Alan Keyes and picked home-state boy Barack Obama for their Senate seat.
Georgia, in turn, has notoriously gerrymandered its districts, in effect forcing certain candidates to move, to relocate their “residences” in order to run for re-election, most famously, I think, Saxby Chambliss.
The Democrats re-drew the congressional district lines so that his original hometown, Moultrie, was suddenly in another district. Rather than run in his new district, Chambliss moved several miles east.
Then he voided the problem by, an election or two later, running for the statewide seat of U.S. senator.
Bob Barr and another Republican member of Congress were forced into the same district by Democrat gerrymandering, and Barr was retired from Congress.
I believe that same year the Democrats were thus able to add one, or even two, of their own to the delegation.
{{ Bob Barr and another Republican member of Congress were forced into the same district by Democrat gerrymandering }}
“Democrat” is a noun. The proper word to use here is “Democratic.” Conservative Republicans since around the time of Tom DeLay seem to have lost the ability to distinguish between nouns and adjectives when it comes to their political opponents. The only purpose it serves is to make them look ridiculous as they torture their beloved English language in order to avoid using the word “Democratic.”
Courts have stuck down things like term limits for Congress, when voted upon by states. I imagine there would be some minimum resident requirements for congressional candidates. Did Allen Keyes simply file for the Illinois seat, with a Maryland address?
Georgia Law (27-2-2) defines “election district” as being synonymous with “precinct” or “voting precinct”. The proposed change to (27-2-153) which would require an affirmative statement “that his or her residence is within the election district for the office to which he or she seeks to be elected” is pure gobbledygook, unless the office were for precinct chairman.
But elsewhere in (27-2-153) the candidate is required to specify not only his voting precinct but the office he is seeking.
(27-2-153) applies only to candidates filing for nomination by a political party. (27-2-5) gives the Secretary of State authority to keep unqualified candidates off the ballot, including party nominees.
So I suspect there must have been a case where someone was nominated in a primary, and then been disqualified on the basis of not residing in a district.
How can it be that requiring someone to live in a district by the state to run for US Congress not be considered a “manner”, but requiring signatures to get on the ballot is? The courts are not being consistant here. Either the states can add requirements and call it a “manner” or they can’t.
Gail Buckner was the Democrat candidate for Secretary of State in 2006. She was elected to the state senate in 2008 after defeating the incumbent in the primary. She had previously served in the House for 16 years.
In 2008 in an adjoining senate district, there was an issue whether one of the candidates in the Republican primary was a bona fide resident of the district. He had been previously elected from the district for 12 years, including 2002. He was redistricted out of the district (by about a mile), and in 2004 ran unsuccessfully for a congressional nomination.
In 2006, he attempted to run for his senate seat, but was ruled off the primary ballot by an administrative law judge, who determined that his $300/month basement apartment without a phone was not his residence, but rather the $700,000 7300 square foot house he still owned, but which was no longer in the district.
In 2008, he ran again. Once again the question of residency was raised, since he still owned the $700,000 house, but had also purchased a smaller house which he now claimed as a residence. Apparently there was no legal challenges, but he was defeated in the primary.
If David Gaines tortures musical notes as harshly as he tortures the English language, I’ll bet his compositions are as ugly as his apparent political leanings.
It is true that “Democratic” is the official name of his very anti-democratic party, but it is equally true that the members of his party who get elected to the state legislature and then gerrymander the state’s election districts compose a Democrat legislature, just as, if the other major party had the majority, it would be a Republican legislature.
#4: “Bob Barr and another Republican member of Congress were forced into the same district by Democrat gerrymandering…”
Actually, Barr picked that district in 2002 because he figured he could beat John Linder. Neal Boortz, the Atlanta-based radio talk show host, was highly critical of Barr for this and backed Linder.
What about members of religions that have a prohibition against swearing to any oaths? The legislators should be allowed the choice to affirm the oath as well.