On April 26, U.S. District Court Judge Sue Myerscough denied the motion of the state of Illinois to dismiss the ballot access case that concerns the 5% petition requirement for independent candidates for U.S. House. The case is Gill v Scholz, c.d., 3:16cv-03221.
The case had been filed in 2016 after independent U.S. House candidate David Gill was kept off the ballot. Judge Myerscough put him on the ballot, believing that the 5% petition requirement, as shown by the historical record, is too difficult. The Seventh Circuit removed Gill from the ballot a few weeks later, but did not write anything about the constitutional issue. The state then went back to Judge Myerscough and said the 7th circuit action proves that the law is constitutional. Judge Myerscough wrote on April 26, “Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss is Denied. This Court previously found that Plaintiffs had established a sufficient likelihood of success on the merits to warrant a preliminary injunction. Although the 7th Circuit stayed enforcement of this Court’s preliminary injunction, the Seventh Circuit did not rule on the merits and ultimately dismissed the appeal as moot after the election. The Seventh Circuit did not vacate this Court’s preliminary injunction order despite Defendants’ request that the court do so. Defendants shall file an answer on or before May 10, 2017.”
Could a state prohibited a newspaper from publishing until it had five percent of the population signed up as subscribers?
When a candidate declares for elective office he is publishing to notify voters they they can vote for him when they, in turn, publish their choices on the ballot with a presumption those votes will be honestly counted.
By the freedom of the press in the the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment extension of the Bill of Rights to the states, how can the state censor the publishing of candidacy and voters publishing their votes on the ballot with quotas for a “modicum of support” historically or prospectively, taxes (filing fees) or “winnowing” through mandatory primary elections or “top-two only” general elections that censor freedom of the press? Where does that exemption from the First Amendment for the states appear in the Constitution?
It doesn’t, of course, except devious legislative fictions upheld by courts charged to enforce the Bill of Rights.