On June 26, the Washington Secretary of State filed this opening brief in the Ninth Circuit in De La Fuente v Wyman, 18-35208. The issue is the state law that says petitions to place an independent presidential candidate, or the presidential nominee of an unqualified party, can’t start to circulate until the group has run a legal notice in a newspaper, explaining where they will be petitioning.
The U.S. District Court had invalidated the law.
The state emphasizes in its appeal brief that many independent presidential candidates, and presidential nominees of unqualified parties, have managed to comply with the law. But in Anderson v Celebrezze, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Ohio’s March independent presidential petition deadline, even though many presidential candidates had complied with the March deadline. Footnote 12 of Anderson v Celebrezze acknowledges that in 1980 alone, five presidential petitions managed to comply with the March deadline, but that wasn’t enough to save the law. Also in 1976, five Ohio independent presidential petitions had also complied with the deadline.
More separate and unequal stuff —
more violations of Brown v Bd of Ed 1954
2018-1954 = X
Solve for X — become an election law math genius —
regardless of all math moron lawyers and judges.
Washington should do like Zambia and have have the supporters of a candidate show up at government offices and be counted. Each group would schedule an appointment.
An alternative would be to send out blank ballots to everyone and have them fill in nomination. Whitney in Walla Walla, Johann in Yakima, or Peter in Puyallup, might thin, “that car dealer in San Diego, Rocky something would make a good president” and write his name in.