On January 15, the U.S. Supreme Court said that it will hear Doe v Reed, 09-559, the case from Washington state on whether the Constitution forbids states from making public the names and addresses of people who sign petitions. The case had been filed by people who circulated a referendum petition against civil unions for same-sex couples. The people who submitted the petition do not want the names and addresses of the signers to be given by the Secretary of State to a group that planned to post the names and addresses on an internet site.
The Court’s conference was on January 15. Normally, the Court won’t reveal what it has decided at conference until the following week. But the Court released the news early on January 15, to make it easier for the attorneys on both sides to begin writing their briefs, because the argument will either be in April 2010, or October 2010. The Court accepted four other cases as well (the other cases are not election-law related).
Doe v Reed will be the first case the U.S. Supreme Court has heard on procedures for ballot access petitions since 2008, when it issued its opinion in New York State Board of Elections v Lopez-Torres. That case upheld New York state’s procedures for candidates for Delegate to Judicial Nominating Conventions to get themselves onto primary ballots. The Lopez-Torres decision didn’t pay much attention to the details of how tough those petition requirements were. Instead, the Court seemed to say that because the Democratic and Republican Parties wanted ballot access for their own primary ballots to be restrictive, that was their decision.
How many DEATH threats or less than DEATH threats have been made so far in the Doe case ???
Sorry – the party hack Donkey and Elephant EVIL top monsters are playing for PERMANENT CONTROL of the U.S.A. regime — by ANY means necessary — including DEATH threats for high profile stuff — especially by fanatic one issue gangs.
— i.e. KILL the opposition if necessary — see the street gang murders in 1929-1933 in Germany between the statist commies and the statist nazis.
Well, the USSC rulings on ballot access have always been very entertaing.
Why would their be any right or expectation of privacy for people who sign a ballot measure petition? Well…based on what the court has said time and time again their is no right.
Yet, given the circumstances, the conservatives will probably jump on board to magically find a right to privacy that they have thus far rejected.
Personally, I believe that a really good reason [i.e. public safety or terrorism] should exist before we make this sort of information public.
Political, philosophical or religious disagreement or the fact that the people peddling the petition are [Prop 8] total bigots is probably not the standard to be used.
The U.S. Supreme Court already upheld privacy for circulators. In Buckley v American Constitutional Law Foundation it struck down a Colorado law saying circulators had to wear a button giving their name. So if circulators can have privacy, why can’t voters?
If John Doe loses this case, and more and more, people who sign petitions learn that their name, address and signature will appear on a web page, it will be much harder to get people to sign petitions.
# 3 — SO – how soon before only incumbents dare run for office (by filing affidavits of candidacy — as is the case for some incumbent judges in the States seeking re-election) ???
Perhaps the EVIL party hacks will just get rid of those bothersome elections and have the regimes go back to hereditary stuff — in vogue for thousands of years in TYRANT monarchy/oligarchy regimes ???
THE CRISIS is obviously coming due to the EVIL party hack MINORITY RULE gerrymander regimes.
See 1773-1775 and 1859-1861 — each after a LONG buildup of stuff due to the party hacks.
See the second paragraph of the DOI and the various other stuff in the DOI about legislatures — look for *formidable to tyrants only* in the DOI.
ANY body working on DOI II ???????