On July 24, the North Carolina legislature passed SB 3, on the same day the bill had been introduced. It says that party labels for judicial candidates will be omitted, for candidates who had switched party affiliation during the 90 days preceding filing for office.
The motive for the bill is that one of the State Supreme Court elections this November has three candidates on the ballot, two Republicans and one Democrat. There is no provision for a runoff. The Republican majority in the legislature believes that one of the Republicans is secretly loyal to the Democratic Party, and that he only changed his registration from Democrat to Republican, and then filed to run, in order to split the Republican vote. There are no party nominees for judicial races in North Carolina, and no involvement with any primary, but there are party labels in November.
If Governor Roy Cooper vetoes the bill, the legislature will almost certainly override his veto. If it is enacted, there will be a question as to whether it is constitutional for a government to print party labels for some candidates, but not other candidates. A similar case is pending in the Ninth Circuit in California, Soltysik v Padilla. A decision could come at any time.
California used to have restrictions on a candidate changing affiliation in order to run, Remember when Lucy Killea had to get a law passed to permit her to run as an independent?
There is already a restriction in a candidate changing affiliation immediately before the primary for other offices. If there were still primaries for judicial offices, the turncoat Democrat would not have been permitted to run in the Republican primary.
One more example of CORRUPT robot party hack gerrymander OLIGARCHS at work.
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NO primaries.
Nonpartisan AppV for exec/judic offices – pending Condorcet.
Another case of DEADLINES — printing ballots — and always getting past the next/coming election —
to have more corrupt hacks in POWER.
The old California law let anyone be a write-in in any party’s primary, regardless of affiliation or past affiliation.
A candidate could not run as an independent if they had recently disaffiliated (see ‘Storer v Brown’).
SPECIFIC — ANOTHER RETROACTIVE MACHINATION – now a favorite machination by the gerrymander oligarchs — esp in elections.
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NO retroactive laws — yet another CRISIS const amdt.