On April 10, Jerry Trudell filed his opening brief in the Vermont Supreme Court in Trudell v Markowitz. This is the lawsuit that challenges the petition deadline for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties. The 2009 session of the legislature moved the deadline from September to June. The primary is in August.
The lower Vermont state court had upheld the deadline, in a decision that did not even discuss the holding in Anderson v Celebrezze, the U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1983 that said early petition deadlines for independent candidates are unconstitutional. Instead the lower court based the decision on a 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Storer v Brown, which did not even concern petition deadlines for independent candidates. Instead, Storer v Brown upheld a law saying no one could be an independent candidate if he or she had been a member of a qualified party during the preceding year.
The appeal in Trudell’s case was helped by the Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE), which helped raise money for the costs of preparing the transcript. Some of the readers of this blog helped with that fund appeal.
The 2009 legislature didn’t even carve out an exception for independent presidential candidates. Thus, the Green Party is severely disadvantaged in Vermont. It is not a ballot-qualified party, so it can only place its presidential nominee on the ballot by using the independent/minor party petition process. But the party won’t know who its national nominees will be until July 15, too late for the petition.
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Jerry Trudell only needs 500 ballot qualification petition
signatures from Vermont registered voters to get on the
official election ballot for
Governor – 500 signatures needed
U.S. Senate – 500 signatures needed
U.S. House of Representatives – 500 signatures needed.
He has – counting from today, April 14, 2012
until June 14, 2012.
What is the problem?
A severely disabled Vermont man in a wheel chair
got on the ballot in 2008 for U.S. House of Representatives
and it was his first time run, and he got about 18%
of the vote!
RICHARD LEE,
a parapalegic in California,
who just lost his
medical marijuana dispensary
which was raided by federal agents
this past week,
could collect 1,000
ballot access petition signatures
before the deadline, June 14, 2012,
from Vermont registered
voters and get on the Vermont ballot for the
General Election 2012 for President as an Independent
candidate, or for the U.S. Marijuana Party, using the
3 descriptive words “designer” party rule.
You only need 1,000 Vermont registered voters
to sign your petition to qualify. The largest city in
Vermont is Burlington with a population of about
55,000 people, and there are camping grounds
along Lake Champlain. It is south of Montreal,
Canada.
The population of the entire State of Vermont is
only about 620,000 people. It is one of the
low ballot access petition signature requirement
states. There are a few others.
Petition signatures are now due JUNE 14th, 2012
before 5 pm Vermont time.
http://www.sec.state.vt.us
click on Elections
#2, there are two problems with such an early petition deadline: (1) it prevents candidates from entering the race in the early summer; (2) it injures unqualified parties that hold their presidential conventions in the summer, such as the Green Party.
Important presidential candidates who entered the race after the Vermont deadline include Robert La Follette (who declared as an independent Progressive in 1924) on July 4; Strom Thurmond in 1948; Theodore Roosevelt in 1912; John G. Schmitz in 1972; Congressman William Lemke in 1936.