On the evening of April 2, the Montana Democratic Party and others filed a state lawsuit against the Secretary of State, saying the Secretary of State erroneously determined that the Green Party petition had enough valid signatures. The complaint does not claim the party lacks at least 5,000 signatures. But the law also says that the party must have had approximately 135 signatures in each of one-third of the 100 state house districts, and that the party is short in four districts. See this story.
Ironically, if the petition is found to be invalid, the Green Party would have a strong claim that the March petition deadline for new parties is unconstitutionally early. Petition deadlines for new parties that are as early as March have been held unconstitutional in Alabama (1991), Alaska (1990), Arkansas (1977), Idaho (1984), Maine (1984), Maryland (1978), Massachusetts (1984), Nevada (1986), New Jersey (1997), New Mexico (2012), Pennsylvania (1984), South Dakota (2018), Tennessee (2010), and Wyoming (1984).
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/814/
Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814 (1969)
UNCONSTITUTIONAL spread signatures stuff — a mere 49 years ago.
The difference with Moore v Ogilvie is that the “signature spread” then was over counties with very different populations, while Montana (like some other places) has switched to distribution across political districts which are at least within a SCOTUS-limited range of each other’s populations.
OBVIOUSLY NO 2 districts have the exactly same number of actual voters.
Census populations are instantly obsolete.
@DR, The numbers in Montana are based on actual numbers of voters, which should be reflective of actual potential signers.
In Montana, it appears that petitions can be submitted by anybody, and can be turned in at any time. The Green Party put its petition blanks on its website, which makes a lot of sense in a large state like Montana with not a lot of people. The petitions are collected by county and turned into county officials. The petitions do not have to be collected by district, and it appears that it is the county election officials who sort out the districts. An individual large county can have around 10 house districts, and individual submissions of 100 more of less signatures has signatures from most of them. It might not be a very big problem with signers from other counties, because a collector would have to go file them in another county 50 miles away, and might not even bother.
It appears that almost all the signatures were collected from four large counties: Yellowstone (Billings), Missoula (Missoula), Cascade (Great Falls), and Lewis and Clark (Helena). Two other large counties Gallatin (Bozeman) and Flathead (Kalispell) were skipped, perhaps because their population is more dispersed, though Bozeman might appear to be a lucrative target since it has Montana State University.
135 signatures may not be typical for a Montana House district. The numbers given in the “example” in the lawsuit are for the districts being challenged, which are all in larger counties. Signature counts are based on the winning gubernatorial candidates votes in 2016. A Democratic governor was elected in 2016, and he either won some large cities outright (Missoula, Bozeman, Helena, Butte) or was competitive (Great Falls and Billings). The numbers required for many rural districts are quite less, but would be much harder to collect from.
It appears that enough signatures were collected and validated by counting election officials in 38 counties. If 135 signatures were collected in each of those 38 districts there would be a total of 5200 signatures. The 5000 statewide figure is effectively meaningless. The district thresholds are based on the winning candidate’s vote count in each district. In a state where the governor was elected with 50.2% of the vote, the standard appears to be arbitrary and capricious. If a Republican had been elected, the numbers in some districts would drastically decline but be larger in other districts.
The Democratic complaint complains that the signatures were collected before the deadline and filed at or before the deadline. I don’t think that is the most compelling legal argument. It goes on to say that that this left little time for county election officials to invalidate enough signatures. It appears that county election officials were validating around 55% to 70% of signatures.
The Democrats are saying about 15% more should have been discounted. They are not claiming that there were not enough signature collected from the districts, but that county election officials were not discriminating enough, and if 180 bad signatures were disqualified in 9 districts, that there would only be enough signatures from 30 districts.
One thing that is bothersome is that they said that county election officials in one county gave them copies of original signatures from registration records, but two other counties refused. Did the one county break the law by releasing confidential records to political party?
The individual plaintiffs claim that they are harmed by having to spend extra time educating voters to not vote for someone other than the Democrats they support. They also suggest that the modicum of support provisions protect against ballot clutter and voter confusion.
The case was filed in Helena, so presumably they have a Democrat non-partisan judge rather than a Republican non-partisan judge.
Any non-partisan non-partisan judges ever or surviving ???
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AppV for electing ALL judges.