On April 8, the Libertarian Party asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal in Libertarian Party v Dardenne. The issue is whether Bob Barr should have been on the November 2008 ballot in Louisiana. The party submitted its presidential elector paperwork on time, from the viewpoint of the Governor’s Emergency Proclamation, but late, from the viewpoint of the Secretary of State’s rules. Here is the brief, which not only presents the ballot access issue, but the separate issue of whether the case should be considered moot or not, and a third issue of whether the state should have accepted service without the need for the party to pay a process server.
The U.S. Supreme Court now has four ballot access cases, and should decide before June whether to hear any of them. They are the Florida case on petitioning at the polls, and the cases for presidential ballot access in 2008 from Mississippi and Louisiana, and the Alabama case over the number of signatures for an independent for Congress.
The deadlines for filing nomination papers is only necessitated only by the monopoly of the state of printing paper ballots. Since the ballots must printed on only a few machines, they must be printed in large volumes, checked for accuracy, securely stored, transported, kept secure throughout the entire pipeline from printer to voter to canvassing and retention for possible recounts.
If many printers were used to print ballots locally only as needed, security would be much simpler. Cost over time would be much lower. Ballot on demand printing would extend the necessary deadlines by many weeks to perhaps only days before an election. Just in time and on demand ballot production would add flexibility and economy which current procedures do not and cannot allow.
Long story short: It ain’t 1910 anymore.
Really? Can Richard comment on this. I never really thought too much about it, but who do state’s formally print up their ballots?
Also, looks like we will have a new Supreme Court Justice…the most recent appointment has a better then average record on election law issues, so maybe so will the next one..
Here’s a place to start if you want to know who prints ballots: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/7659/73820.html
Here’s the ballot printer in Oklahoma: http://www.royalprintingco.com/
#2 Originally, elections were either by paper ballot or voice. If by paper ballot, a voter would simply print the name of the person they favored on a piece of paper and drop it in the ballot box. If by voice, they would simply announce who they were voting for.
There were no nominations in a formal sense. In small communities, there might be some agreement as to who the more upstanding member of the community were, and might represent the town in the legislature.
As parties developed, they would decide who they were going to support, and urge voters to write in the name of that candidate. Somewhere along the way, there was a court ruling that names could be mechanically printed on the ballot. So instead of a voter printing “John Smith” on a piece of paper, parties would distribute printed ballots with “John Smith” and urge voters to simply take one of their ballots, and deposit it in the ballot box.
Newspapers might print ballots with recognized candidates, which voter could edit, by crossing out names, or adding a name or two. Newspapers were much more partisan than now, and they might decide that certain candidates weren’t really worthy of consideration by their readers, and leave there name off the ballot.
Parties might try to prevent ballots from other parties from being distributed. Or ballots that were ostensibly from a particular party might have couple of candidates change by unscrupulous printers. Ballots might be distributed with a bribe, or an attempt made to stuff the ballot box, which would be easier to do if you just happened to have a dozen ballots. Ballots might be printed with a distinctive color so that a voter and his choices could be identified as he made his way to the ballot box. Minor party and independent candidates might have a hard time competing under such a system, or they might be charged a fee by a “neutral” printer to include a candidate’s name on a ballot.
The government-printed ballot, or Australian ballot was a reform that was first introduced in Australia. It was first used in Louisville, KY and Massachusetts in 1888 and spread throughout the United States by about 1920.
A downside of the Australian ballot is that there must be an official system of nomination, so that the government can print candidate names on the ballot. Political parties sought to maintain the form of the old party-printed ballots, by having candidates arranged in columns by party, and permitted straight-ticket voting.
They would also seek laws that would make it harder for minor parties and individuals to have their name placed on the ballot. Instead of physical toughs who would disrupt the distribution of party ballots from competing parties, they would use lawyers.
Since the government was paying for the printing of the ballots, they could claim to be saving money by preventing minor parties and lesser known candidates on the ballot, or blocking “fraudulent” petitions and acting in the interest of “good government”.
Before *official* ballots came along there were TYRANT party hacks watching and recording who voted what.
Result — threats and purges by the party hacks — i.e. loss of jobs, etc.
I once wrote a decent essay that went into Libertarian Party v Dardenne and compared it to the Texas case to put Barr on the ballot. One of those contradicts the other…
Sry, I meant to force Democrats and Republicans off the ballot. I think the case is Barr v Andrade.
#9 Texas law with regard to major party presidential nominations was in conflict with itself.
Major parties have ballot access for presidential candidates only if they hold a presidential preference primary and base a significant share of their delegates to the national convention on the results of the primary.
To meet the deadline for filing, the major parties would have had to ignore the national convention. It is ridiculous to require political parties to elect delegates to a national convention as an absolute condition for ballot access, but then not let them have the candidate nominated by that national convention appear on the ballot.
The argument is often made the open ballot access would make ballots as long as a telephone book. Rubbish. Did you ever notice how general election ballots are shortened in races where either of the two tyrannical parties has no opposing candidate in the race the winner’s name is not even printed on the ballot. Much of this nation is under one-party rule in state districts and even in some congressional elections.
There is no such thing as too many choices for the voters.