On January 30, the Arkansas Senate passed SB 163 by a vote of 27-7. It raises the number of signatures needed for a newly-qualifying party from 10,000 signatures to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, which would be almost 27,000 signatures for 2020. Every Republican Senator voted for the bill, and one Democrat, Senator Greg Leding, also voted for it.
Twice, a U.S. District Court had ruled the old 3% petition unconstitutional, in 1996 in a Reform Party case, and again in a 2006 Green Party case.
Furthermore, the deadline for the petition is now January 2. Yet the federal courts had twice in the past ruled that similar Arkansas party petition deadlines were unconstitutional. In 1977 the American Party won a lawsuit that the April deadline was too early. In 1996 the Reform Party won a lawsuit against the January deadline. Every time a party won against the deadline in court, the legislature would fix it, but then a few years later they would forget what had happened, and make it earlier again. After the 1996 decision the legislature moved that deadline to July, and then to May, and then to January.
If this bill is signed into law, it will be an easy target for a lawsuit.
Dirty rotten scoundrels.
I wish there were some repercussions for creating an unconstitutional law for the lawmakers.
The state government will probably be required to pay attorneys fees to whichever attorneys sue the state. But that only affects the state treasury, not the pocketbooks of any individual legislator.
SCOTUS perversions of legislator *immunity* esp since about 1952.
“The state government will probably be required to pay attorneys fees to whichever attorneys sue the state. But that only affects the state treasury, not the pocketbooks of any individual legislator.”
There ought to be some kind of penalty against the legislators. Ideally, I’d like to see them put in prison, but if this is not possible, I’d like to see a law that says that they have to pay out of their own pockets (as in out of their salary, and/or their personal assets) rather than hitting up the state treasury for it.