Rocky De La Fuente is suing to overturn the California law for independent presidential candidate ballot access, which required 178,039 signatures in 2016, and which will probably require 200,000 in 2020. The percentage requirement is 1% of the number of registered voters in the previous election. The case is in the Ninth Circuit. De La Fuente v Padilla, 17-56668. On June 13, California filed its brief.
The brief opens with an attack on De La Fuente, pointing out that he has frequently switched parties, and has run for two different offices in the same election year, and that he has participated in presidential primaries as well as the general election. This seems to be an attempt to deflect the attention of the judges to De La Fuente’s personal political behavior, and away from the law that is being challenged.
The California independent procedure is so difficult that it has kept the following candidates off the ballot: Eugene McCarthy in 1976, Ralph Nader in 2004, and Evan McMullin in 2016. All of them had substantial support in the states in which they were on the ballot. McCarthy and Nader placed third nationally in the listed races, and McMullin placed fifth.
The brief argues that because the Ninth Circuit upheld Hawaii’s independent presidential petition requirement in 2010 in Nader v Cronin, 620 F.3d 1214, the California law is also constitutional. The Hawaii requirement was a petition of 1% of the last presidential vote cast, which was only 3,711 signatures in 2004, the year the case was filed. The Hawaii deadline was September 3, 2004, and an independent presidential candidate could start petitioning as early as he or she wished. By contrast, the California petition in 2016 had to be completed in 105 days and was due August 12. The brief says that the Hawaii case is “directly on-point”. It is ludicrous for anyone to suggest that a requirement to collect 3,711 signatures in an unlimited time period is the same as collecting 178,039 signatures in 105 days.
The brief makes no mention of Nader v Brewer, 531 F.3d 1028, a Ninth Circuit case from 2008 that struck down Arizona’s independent petition requirement of 14,694 signatures, due in June.
The California state brief says in footnote 13 that “California’s 1% requirement falls in the middle of the range of, or is less than, what other U.S. states require.” To support this point, the brief cites a 2016 report by the National Association of Secretaries of State. But the brief does not attach the NASS report, and the NASS Report does not support the state’s assertion. There are only two states with a more severe independent presidential independent petition requirement than California, New Mexico and Wyoming, even if one assumes that the best way to compare states is on a percentage basis. There are three states that are tied with California: Arizona, Delaware and Florida. There are some errors in the NASS Report: it is incorrect for Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, even as of mid-2016; and it is out-of-date for Maryland, North Carolina, and Oklahoma (those three states all eased their independent presidential petition requirements in 2017).
In 2017, the Eleventh Circuit struck down Georgia’s petition requirement for independent presidential candidates and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties. The Georgia law was virtually identical to the California law being challenged, 1% of the registered voters as of the preceding election. The California brief dismissed the Georgia decision by saying that Georgia “systematically excluded third-party candidates.” But actually, the Georgia decision mentions that the Reform Party was on the Georgia ballot for president in 1996 and 2000, and the Libertarian Party was on in all presidential elections 1988 through the present.
De La Fuente has the right to file a reply brief.
END the EVIL/CORRUPTION NOW.
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Equal Ballot Access Brief, 3 Aug 2017
The fundamental constitutional principle of SEPARATE-IS-NOT-EQUAL from the landmark Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954), was unfortunately N-O-T brought up in Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23 (1968).
Every State has SEPARATE and UNEQUAL ballot access laws for the candidates of —
(1) so-called major parties,
(2) old so-called minor parties,
(3) new so-called minor parties and
(4) independents. [Specify for State involved].
Also, the following basic points have not been properly noticed —
(1) there is ONE class of electors in a general election,
(2) there is ONE class of candidates on the general election ballots (i.e. a candidate is on or off the ballots) and
(3) each general election for each office is NEW and has ZERO to do with any prior general election — for such office (or any other office) — or any other thing since 4 July 1776 — EXCEPT the number of actual voters at the prior general election in the election area of the office involved — for having EQUAL nominating petitions at the next election (see below).
A-L-L ballot access cases have failed to note such basic points including
Williams,
Jenness v. Fortson, 403 U.S. 431 (1971),
American Party of Texas v. White, 415 U.S. 767 (1974),
Munro v. Socialist Workers Party, 479 U.S. 189 (1986),
Norman v. Reed, 502 U.S. 279 (1992) and
New York State Board of Elections v. Lopez Torres, 552 U.S. 196 (2008).
[I.E. suggest/demand that ALL of the cases beginning with Williams be overruled.]
The Equal Protection Clause in 14th Amendment, Sec. 1 requires that all candidates for the SAME office in the SAME election area pass the SAME (i.e. *EQUAL*) test(s) for ballot access to get on state or local general election ballots.
Obviously an *EQUAL* nominating petition for ALL candidates for the SAME office in the SAME area will show which candidates have a preliminary showing of voter support — or EQUAL filing fees.
See also Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814 (1969) (equal regional treatment of electors who sign petitions) and Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 631-636 (1996) (discrimination against homosexuals).
The Moore case was noted in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 107 (2000).
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The cases can be seen via
http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4154572/roque-rocky-de-la-fuente-v-alex-padilla/
LOTS OF COURT PAPERWORK — FIND AND NOTE THE RW ITEMS — AT LEAST *SOME* EXPERTISE IN THE CASE.
Well, Richard, I hope that the De La Fuente lawyers consult with you when preparing their reply brief. As is usual, you very competently identify and express the rebuttal points to California’s brief.
Was there the 19th century Supreme Court decision that ruled state monopolization of the ballot to administer a secret ballot was constitutional? I’ve been looking for nearly two years and I haven’t found the case if there is one.
Meanwhile, doesn’t Congress have exclusive judicial authority to rule on the qualifications of candidates for federal office? When a state’s voters send a candidate-elect or send Presidential Electors votes to the Congress, isn’t it their exclusive duty of the Congress to be the judge of the election, returns and qualifications of the person submitted to take office?
Isn’t the designation of the states of the as an agent of the federal government to hold (administer and make rules for) elections in the Constitution subject to the supervision of Congress which may make or alter state laws governing elections at any time?
Doesn’t Constitution limit the laws Congress may make to govern state elections subject to all other Constitutional provisions? Could not either house of Congress refuse to seat a candidate-elect because the election laws of the state by which they were elected are discriminatory and violate the Qualifications clauses of the Constitution? Would it not take a Constitutional Amendment to alter Constitutional qualifications for President and Congress?
How can a state disqualify a candidate from the ballot for failing to meet a petitioning quota when no such petitioning qualification or ballot admission fee appears in the Constitution?
Are all U. S. elections as presently conducted by the states unconstitutional?
Until Williams v Rhodes in 1968, the only federal court that ever struck down a ballot access before 1968 was a US District Court in Illinois that struck down a law banning the Communist Party from the ballot.
DFR —
Most State laws are *arbitrary* *police power* laws enacted by the various ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymander regimes —
political-election
social
economic
etc.
California should switch to Top 2 for presidential electors elected from congressional districts (with two elected from pairs of SBOE districts).
JR —
Even more excuses for ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymanders.
See Maine 2016 — 2 at large (Clinton), 2 USA Rep gerrymander districts – 1 Trump, 1 Clinton.
@DFR
Congress could determine that the California petition limit represents an abridgement of the right to vote, and strip California of its congressional representation. Think about that – how likely is that to happen?
Congress is reticent to establish time, place, manner, regulations for its members. After they imposed district elections, some States continued to elect at large. Because partisan control had changed, this was accepted. They had only imposed district elections because they were concerned that more states would switch to at large elections, changing overall control of Congress. The “uniform” election date was in place for almost a century before it was uniformly applied. It was only imposed in 1872 because of Reconstruction.
There is no reason that Congress could not have refused to seat representatives from Louisiana because they had been elected on the wrong date. Instead they waited on the Supreme Court.
Representatives are familiar with the election system used in their state. They may have been a legislator before moving on to Congress. They would logically think, “tt can’t be a bad system if it elected me.”
JR —
Having the gerrymsnder HACKS ruling on the election of other gerrymander HACKS is just one of many FATAL defects [one of the major violations of Separation of Powers] in the nearly dead USA Const.
ALL sorts of FATAL JUNK copied in 1776-1787 from the FATAL JUNK in the Brit regime — into the State and USA regimes.