On July 11, U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake upheld the Maryland ballot access law that requires all parties that fail to poll 1% for the office at the top of the ballot to submit 10,000 signatures in order to get back on the ballot. Johnston v Lamone, 1:18cv-3988.
The Libertarian Party had filed this case after it failed to get 1% for Governor in November 2018. The party argued that because it has over 22,000 registered members, it is obvious that it has the support of at least 10,000 voters. Therefore, it argued that requiring it to submit such a petition is meaningless. But the Judge said that it may be that the people who registered Libertarian no longer support the party, and they may be maintaining their Libertarian registration because of inertia. This part of the decision is not surprising, because she had denied injunctive relief several months ago for the same reason.
She did not rule on the other point in the lawsuit, that the law irrationally requires petition signatures to exactly match that voter’s name on the voter registration form, including middle initials versus the full middle name; or differences such as “Robert” in one place and “Bob” in another. She said that issue is not ripe, until the party does its new petition.
Another LOSS due to the same old ROTTED arguments by the same olde MORON lawyers ???
How SAME OLDE STUPID [SOS} are the LP *leaders* in hiring such same olde MORON lawyers ???
BLAH BLAH BLAH! ROT BLAH… RED DONKEY KONG…BLAH BLAH. GEEZ
Don’t blame the lawyers yet! I remember when Catherine Blake was a federal magistrate judge (1980’s) and she didn’t impress me then. Her decision is no surprise. She was under Judge Northrup. The Libertarian Party made good arguments. We are living in an era when ballot access rights are in reverse (I believe).
The LPMD should acquire their statewide ballot access list and start contacting their voters, one by one. Schedule some local meetings in each county whereby folks could come by and sign the petition and also organize door-to-door canvassing. Many of them would certainly volunteer thus spreading the work out into manageable chunks. It should not take too long to accomplish the task, especially since, if I understand correctly, any voter regardless of registration can sign the petition.
Then, there would be a framework in place for future election years.
I meant to say statewide voter registration list.