On November 1, the Democratic Party sued Georgia over the law that says the nominees of the party that won the last gubernatorial race are always listed first on the general election ballot. S.P.S. v Raffensperger. The case doesn’t have a number yet so has not yet been assigned to a judge.
Unlike similar Democratic Party lawsuits in Texas, Florida, and Arizona, this Complaint does not suggest that only major parties are entitled to an equal chance to be listed first on the ballot.
The first-named plaintiff is identified only by his initials, because he is not yet 18 years old, but he will be 18 by the time of the 2020 election. Thanks to Brandon Haynes for the link.
Very EVIL cute / creative junk
“arbitrary thumb on the scale” in 1. in Complaint.
** UN-equal ** too boring ???
The Libertarian Party is not a “political party” under Georgia statute. They are a “political body”.
The Libertarian Party should intervene.
It is similar to ‘Daughter of Love v Blanco’. After ‘Foster v. Love’ was decided by the SCOTUS. The legislature deadlocked on a remedy. Foster and the House wanted to move the Open Primary to TFTATFMIN, with a conditional runoff in December. Cleo Fields and the Senate wanted to restore the old exclusionary partisan primary.
The case went back to federal district court, which imposed the new calendar on the Open Ptimary. This was upheld by the 5th Circuit in ‘Love v Foster’. The legislature later codified the decision.
I suspect that the real reason for the lawsuit was to challenge the open primary itself, rather than the timing.
A few years later, Cleo Fields convinced the legislature to try a hybrid version’. If two candidates filed, the Open Primary would be on TFTATFMIN. If 3 or more candidates filed, the Open Primary would be in late September or Early October, with a conditional runoff. Thus the decisive election would be early only some of the time. Generally, there would be multiple candidates for an open seat, the most likely to require a runoff.
The original Love plaintiff filed suit on behalf of his minor daughter, who as chance would have it would turn 18 between the October open primary and TFTATFMIN. By then Kathleen Blanco was governot, so the case was Daughter of Love v Blanco. Besides challenging the hybrid calendar, there was a 26th Amedment challenge, since an October election would make the daughter ineligible to vote by a few weeks.
Louisiana lost the case, and Cleo Field convinced the legislature to retrograde back to partisan congressional primaries.
When the legislature sweitched back to the open congressional primary, legislators thought partisan primaries were quite alien, since their entire political life had used the open primary, and term limits had removed those who might have remembered. The use of the Open Primary for ghubernatorial elections is now 44 years old.
Incidentally, Cleo Fields was elected to the senate last month. Term limits in Louisiana are for three consecutive terms, not three lifetime terms.
At the end of these complaints, they want the judge to order the state “to use a ballot order system that gives similarly-situated major-party candidates an equal opportunity to be listed first on the ballot.”
I guess that’s separating major from minor.
If the judges enjoin the “ballot order statutes”, but don’t order a particular procedure to replace it, it’s not clear to me what would happen.
Minority rule gerrymander legislatures in ALL 50 States —
writing 99 plus pct of laws.
Mass math morons – esp in know-it-all super math MORON media — internet, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc.
A random drawing – to determine the party order on the ballot – seems like a simple and fair solution. It should apply to all of the parties participing.
In Minnesota we have four major parties and i think that the ballot order is based on the previous election.
In North Dakota, a party has to register by petition. Then the order is probably based on the party’s past results.
@AB,
Lawyers won’t directly lie, but they will choose words to mislead you. Under Georgia statute a political party has to receive a certain percentage of the votes. Other groups are termed political bodies. The Libertarian party in Georgia is a political body.
Point 1 of the Georgia statute references $21-2-285(c) and selectively quotes from it. A naive reading would assume that the Libertarian Party was listed 3rd because they received fewer votes than the R and D candidate. But the statute also says that political bodies will fall after political parties, and be listed alphabetically.
It would be interesting if the Georgia Libertarian Party attempted to intervene. Clearly the Democrats can’t represent the interests of the Libertarians since they are inimical to minor parties. I’d bet they would argue that there was a rational basis for treating the Democrats as more equal.
The Libertarians in Texas should add ballot order to their complaint, since if ballot order is significant, then it makes it harder to maintain ballot access.
DIRECT = INDIRECT
Con LAW 000001
esp in DECEIT City — full of direct/indirect LIARS.
1. I thought Georgia ballot access laws were such, that third parties generally didnt get on the ballot.
Yet, the libertarians got on the ballot?
The Georgia law is entirely different for statewide office, versus district office. For statewide office the Libertarian Party has been on the ballot in all elections 1988 through the present. For district office, they are not on. This strange law has existed since 1986. The sponsor of the 1986 law, veteran State Senator Culver Kidd, was afraid his bill (lowering the statewide petition to 1% and setting up a 1% vote test) wouldn’t pass if it included all offices. So the bill just affected statewide office. He tried and tried in later sessions of the legislature to include district office into that law, but those bills always failed, because of course it would have increased competition for state legislative races. Most Georgia state legislators have no opponent on the November ballot, year after year.
It is much easier to qualify for statewide office and maintain that qualification than it is run candidates for district office. Candidates for district office must petition and there is no persistent qualification.
In 2018, there was one independent and no minor party candidates for 250 congressional and legislative seats.
I suspect that if the issue of political bodies vs. political parties were raised in the ballot order case, the Democrat lawyer would glibly explain, “they typically don’t run candidates for most offices.”
The Libertarian Party is challenging the statute at the 11th Circuit. The federal district court ruled aga insdt them.
richard
thanks for answering my question.