On August 21, U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones, a Bush Jr. appointee, upheld the decision of Pennsylvania’s elections department last year to exclude Rocky De La Fuente from the general election ballot, on the grounds that De La Fuente had run in the Democratic presidential primary. De La Fuente v Cortes, 1:16cv-1696. Here is the 23-page decision.
The decision did not even acknowledge the major points made by De La Fuente. The decision says that because the U.S. Supreme Court upheld California’s similar law in 1974 in Storer v Brown, therefore Pennsylvania was correct to bar him from the general election ballot. But Storer v Brown did not relate to presidential elections. The decision does not even mention the point that the true candidates in a presidential election are the presidential elector candidates. Nor does it mention the point that no state’s presidential primary actually nominates anyone. Most of the decision deals with procedural points and says that De La Fuente has standing. The part of the decision on the merits is only five pages long.
Although the decision mentions U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, the 1995 U.S. Supreme Court ruling saying states cannot add to the constitutional qualifications for federal office, it merely says that the issue in that case was different. It does not grapple with the point that the principle is the same. In the term limits case, the Supreme Court said states can’t keep someone off the ballot because of his or her prior political behavior. That principle should apply to sore loser laws for federal office as well. Furthermore, Jones wrote that in the term limits case, the Arkansas law “placed an outright ban on candidates who had already served three terms in the House.” That is not true. The Arkansas law let such candidates run for re-election; they merely had to be write-in candidates.
The decision also upholds a Pennsylvania law that says no one can circulate a primary petition if the circulator is not a member of the candidate’s party. A U.S. District Court in Connecticut had struck down an identical law in Connecticut last year, and the new Pennsylvania decision does not mention the Connecticut precedent. It does mention a New York precedent that upheld a similar restriction.
Single-winner power-grabbers generally arrogantly think that by suing the state at every opportunity they can force their will.
What they may not know is that there is randomness and chaos in elections so the best choice is to simply work under pure proportional representation with the best team layers.
Anything in elections other than pure proportional representation is a distraction and waste of our time while we work towards equal treatment, equal time and equal (lowest) thresholds to help the average voter.
The 10th USA Parliament has been doing it right for more than twenty-two consecutive years and pure proportional representation works fine.
We’re able to identify and attract the best team players while walking away from those not interested in a unifying voting system.
Nobody has it as good as the 10th USA Parliament (est. 1995):
http://www.usparliament.org
Both substantive points are weak. The Court’s sore-loser analysis ignores a whole lot of contrary authority. Its discussion of the circulator requirement ignores virtually everything written on the topic. The majority rule now is that states cannot limit circulation to registered or eligible to be registered voters. Nor can they limit circulation to residents.
One more reason to —
1. Abolish all minority rule (plurality) primaries and the minority rule gerrymander Electoral College.
2. Have ONE election day, a uniform definition of Elector-Voter in ALL of the USA, and ballot access only via nominating petitions or filing fees.
3. Have PR and nonpartisan AppV.
AppV is no good because the biggest majority of voters is able to elect an even larger number/majority of representatives.
If you want pure proportional representation (PR) then approval voting should be rejected.
Approval voting is not fair, not right, not proportional and no good.
The United Coalition has been using pure proportional representation for more than twenty-two consecutive years and it works fine.
Nobody has it as good as the new United Coalition:
http://www.international-parliament.org/ucc.html
That is dissapointing
AppV is for executive and judicial offices ONLY — pending head to head math.
Sore-loser censorship of the ballot cannot restrict the freedom of choice of Presidential Electors. A person elected to the office of Presidential Elector has the constitutional authority to vote for any person who meets the stated qualifications for the office of POTUS.
The question is why voters for Presidential Electors do not have the same constitutional authority to vote for any person who meets the qualifications to be a Presidential Elector? In effect, sore-loser laws are simply ballot censorship laws to impair the free choice of voters.