The Austin Chronicle is a free weekly print alternative newspaper in Austin, Texas. It has a law question-and-answer column written by Luke Ellis. In this issue, a reader asks how an independent candidate gets on the ballot in Texas, and the author is detailed and accurate, and shows how bad the law is. See the column here.
As the columnn says, any 2022 independent candidate must file paperwork before the end of 2021. However, if the Texas 2022 primary is postponed due to any court changing the redistricting, there would be some relief from such an early deadline. The column did not mention there there is also a ballot access lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court that, if it wins, would change the procedure.
Getting on the ballot as an independent, or qualifying an unrecognized party for the ballot in Texas, is unreasonably difficult/
INDIVIDUAL candidates are nominated / elected.
EQUAL ballot access tests.
Much too difficult for the armies of MORON lawyers and worse judges since 1868.
Sadly, the federal lawsuit against Drew Springer’s House bill that led to his, isn’t scheduled for trial until next year. The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow.
Demo Rep, so would the candidates have any party label on the ballot they want, or none of them would have any label, or what?
Please also explain why you are saying that all those judges and lawyers are morons. Judges usually follow precedent in interpreting the constitution. They generally prefer not to be overruled, correct? So let’s start with, are you saying that all ballot access laws which allow for parties to qualify or remain qualified are unconstitutional?
Let’s assume that you say yes. But, as a practical matter, regardless of whether you are correct about that or not, what actually matters is what the Supreme Court says. If some lower court threw out all party qualification laws, which exist in every state and even in federal law for some purposes, it would end up in the supreme court.
What would make you think that the Supreme court would agree with you? Maybe, rather than being morons, all those judges and lawyers and clients or would be clients are rationally assessing their chances that their lawsuits would prevail or their rulings would hold up on appeal?
I’ve also been told that you are or were or a lawyer, that you used to file ballot access lawsuits, and did not have a good track record. Which parts of that are true if any, and which are false if any?.if the first two parts are true, when did you stop filing them, and why?
If your theory is correct, why don’t you try bringing your lawsuits again to test it out? If you don’t, why should anyone else?
QNA C/Q —
Demo Rep, so would the candidates have any party label on the ballot they want, or none of them would have any label, or what?
ANY party label [of *reasonable* length] or NO party label.
Please also explain why you are saying that all those judges and lawyers are morons. Judges usually follow precedent in interpreting the constitution. They generally prefer not to be overruled, correct? So let’s start with, are you saying that all ballot access laws which allow for parties to qualify or remain qualified are unconstitutional?
ALL unconst – INDIVIDUAL candidates are nominated / elected.
Donkeys / elephants / others(?) got grandfather treatment in 1888-1890 primaries
EQUAL in 14-1 Amdt EP Cl — since 1868.
NOT a govt sanctioned *lawyer*.
My state *party* has barely managed to survive – so no need for any lawsuits.
My early cases were deemed obsolete/over-ruled in a late 1970s 6 Cir opin. — due to SCOTUS opins in other cases.
HOWEVER — IF the LP keeps losing ballot access cases, THEN I may have to do another case – for a local partisan office.
—
See Const Annotated Appendix of SCOTUS opins later over-ruled — includes about 5-10 election related opins.
More-
It took from 1896 to 1954 [ a mere 58 years] for the SCOTUS hacks to detect —
separate is NOT equal — in 1954 Brown v Bd of Ed. re 14-1 Amdt EP cl.
Brain dead failure to bring up Brown in 1968 Williams v Rhodes and 1970 Jenness ballot access cases.
Thus the nonstop MORON lawyers in ballot access cases [ esp. LP paid lawyers ] since 1968 to 2021 — a mere 53 years and counting.
Also – each election is N-E-W — esp for any new pariy candidates and independents.
Demo Rep, thank you for your replies. As I suspected, you believe that party qualification is unconstitutional, so that clearly answers one of my questions.
A: ANY party label [of *reasonable* length] or NO party label.
Q: How would reasonable length be defined? Number of words? Number of letters? Would any words be prohibited? If so, how often would the prohibited list be updated and by whom? Would non-words be prohibited? What about using some other person’s name without their permission? What other issues could there be here?
N: There’s a big difference between no party label or any label. But they both have issues. No party label does nothing to communicate to voters what the candidate stands for, and some candidates have an advantage in reaching voters — incumbency, favoritism by established large circulation media, personal wealth, support from wealthy individuals and so on.
N2: If party labels aren’t on the ballot, parties still exist, but not as above board. The big parties have a lot of resources to communicate to voters who their candidates are and what they stand for, but smaller parties have a lot less resources for that, and their individual candidates, even less so. But if the candidate can choose “any” party label, that also harms smaller parties more, because they have no control over who might use their label. Again there, big parties and their well funded candidates have a lot of advantages, to communicate who their party approved candidates are and keep their label from becoming meaningless. Small parties have a lot fewer resources from keeping their brands from being encroached on, poached, devalued, etc.
14th Amendment Section 1:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
N: If I understand correctly, you are saying that party qualification denies some people equal protection of the laws. If I also understand correctly, numerous court precedents indicate otherwise. This is far from the only area of state or federal law where some people are treated differently than others because they belong to some kind of group or another in one way or another.
Q: Are all such laws unconstitutional in your opinion, for the same reason that you believe party qualification is unconstitutional? Would you please unpack exactly how or why you believe that the word equal in Amdt 14-1 makes party qualification unconstitutional?
A: NOT a govt sanctioned *lawyer*.
N: My apologies for the error, if I understand that correctly to mean that YOU are not a government sanctioned lawyer. Please correct me if I misunderstood.
Q: Were you previously a government sanctioned lawyer? If yes, were you disbarred, or just retired/lapsed? If no, in what capacity did you use to file lawsuits – paying client? Representing yourself?
A: My state *party* has barely managed to survive – so no need for any lawsuits.
Q: Why would you think it would be in their interests to eliminate party qualification? Wouldn’t that place their candidates at a greater disadvantage, vis a vis at least the better funded and known candidates of major parties, for the reasons I outlined above?
A: My early cases were deemed obsolete/over-ruled in a late 1970s 6 Cir opin. — due to SCOTUS opins in other cases.
N: Thank you for confirming that.
Q: When was your most recent case? Were any of your cases not deemed obsolete or overruled? Given that you’ve confirmed the above, why would lawyers, clients and judges be “morons” for not filing lawsuits that the existing track record indicates are likely to be deemed obsolete or overruled?
A: IF the LP keeps losing ballot access cases, THEN I may have to do another case – for a local partisan office.
N: It’s a safe bet that the LP will lose some ballot access cases and win some.
Q: How many cases do they have to lose before you file yours? What else is holding you back, if anything?
N: You should probably go ahead and file your new case ASAP if you really believe what you’re saying. If you’re waiting for someone else to do it, chances are it won’t happen. You may or may not win, but at least then you’ll be doing something at least potentially productive to advance your theories in the real world, as opposed to comments on a blog. Time is not on your side, at least in the sense that if you were old enough to be filing lawsuits 40-50 years ago, you are not a young man, and won’t be around forever.
Q: If you keep not filing a new case, why would anyone else? Do you really believe what you’re typing, if that is the only thing you have done about your legal theory since the 1970s?
A: It took from 1896 to 1954 [ a mere 58 years] for the SCOTUS hacks to detect…
N: That’s true. Sometimes long standing precedents to get overruled. Roe may be on the chopping block right now. But longstanding precedents are overruled RARELY. Cases which seek to overturn various precdents get filed all over the place all the time.
Q: Why would it be moronic for clients, lawyers and judges to rationally calculate that a case or ruling that goes against long established precedent is likely to be overruled/dismissed/lose and rationally allocate limited time and money (or record of being overruled) to something that the available evidence shows has a better chance of working?
N: Better chance does not mean anything close to a guarantee.
Do not have ANY more spare time answering the standard many questions from law hair splitters.
The Ballot Access ROT —
1. Each election is NEW.
2. Separate is NOT equal.
3. INDIVIDUAL candidates are nominated / elected
4. EQUAL in 14-1 Amdt EP Cl.
Ballot Access ROT directly connected to ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymander ROT since 1776 [States] / 1789 [USA regime].
1/2 or less votes x 1/2 rigged packed/cracked SMD
= 1/4 or less CONTROL
= oligarchy with wannabee lawless tyrant monarch gang bosses.
5. NOOO extremist primaries – ONE election day.
6. EQUAL nom pets
7. Legis – PR and Execs/Judics – nonpartisan APPV – pending Condorcet — RCV done right.
8. TOTSOP
———
9. LAST HOPE – 18 States with voter pets for state const amdts.
10. 19 Apr 1775 Lexington/Concord — a day the SCOTUS hacks [and New Age MORON lawyers and media ] have yet to detect in a 2nd Amdt case.
A: Do not have ANY more spare time answering the standard many questions from law hair splitters.
N: On the one hand, that’s true. A man old enough to have filed lawsuits in the 1970s may not have much time left. Since you’ve shut down answering non-rhetorical questions, the remaining questions are rhetorical; you can still answer them if you want, but I am not expecting answers.
Q:But on the other, what exactly are you doing with your remaining time, and how does it help to advance your cause?
N: As far as I can see. You’re repeatedly posting endless variations of the same few loops, which you’ve usually shortened to hard to decipher jargon, in the comments of a blog post. Many of those loops consist of insulting people, often as trolls and morons. There are indeed plenty of troll comments here, but you often apply the label where it doesn’t necessarily belong. You also keep saying that lawyers, judges and parties are morons. Yet I’ve laid out the case that they are behaving rationally. The questions above are designed, in part, to see if you can show otherwise or see that they are indeed acting rationally.
Q: How is it working out for you? Is anyone filing the kinds of lawsuits you want them to file while you aren’t? Which of your blog comments will make someone take action that you no longer take yourself – the millionth, or million and first perhaps? What exactly are you accomplishing in the time that you don’t have to answer questions or file the lawsuits you call other people “morons” for not filing?
N: Typing the rest of your comment and similar things over and over and over in the comments here hasn’t caused any lawsuits to be filed in the decades you have done it. As far as I can tell, you have rarely if ever persuaded anyone, much less persuaded them to take action.
Q: Could this really be the best use of your time? Really?
@QNA,
Texas special elections have party labels, but all candidates file by paying a fee (or in lieu of petition).
Minneapolis permits candidates to have a party label or slogan. Recently a candidate running as a Socialist Workers candidate was elected to the city council defeating an incumbent from the #2 party.
In the Jaybird cases (see Terry v. Adams) the SCOTUS ruled that the pre-primary primary violated the right to vote 14-2 because it effectively disenfranchised voters. If I want to support a candidate in the Republican primary for Governor and another for Attorney General in the Democratic primary I am as a matter of law prevented from doing so. I could be charged with a felony for doing so, in which case I might be imprisoned and lose the ability to vote at all.
I could write a check to both candidates, I could display signs or bumper stickers or sweatshirts or hats. I could block walk, or go to rallies. I can do everything to indicate my support but actually vote.
Mr. Riley,
Q: Why is there a government run primary?
N: One alternative might be to allow parties to pick their nominees through whatever means they choose – privately financed and administered primary, conventions, caucuses, auction, or whatever other means they prefer, without government interference. In this scenario, both party qualification and independent candidate qualification could exist. As far as your ability as a voter to participate in the nomination processes of more than one party in the same election, that would be up to the various parties to allow, not allow, or police. As a practical matter, it doesn’t seem highly likely that you’d be prevented from participating – if the government didn’t maintain lists of who voted in primaries, that would require competing parties to share such lists with each other. My guess is they would not.
N2: Another alternative would be to continue government run primaries, but allow you to choose which party’s primary you vote in for which office. Thus, all voters would get one primary ballot, which would have party columns and office rows, or vice versa. Within each of those boxes you could choose a candidate, if there is more than one candidate running for that party’s nomination for that office.
N3: I can think of at least two variants of the second scenario. In the first, you would be limited to picking one candidate overall for each office. Thus, you could vote for a Republican candidate for Governor and a Democratic candidate for Attorney General, but not a Republican candidate for Governor as well as a Democratic candidate for Governor. In the other variant, you could vote in each box. So, if Governor and Attorney General were the the only two offices and Republican and Democrat the only two parties, you could vote in all four boxes or any number of boxes between one and four. Whereas in the other variant you could vote in only one or two of those four boxes, but not more.
Jim Riley: “If I want to support a candidate in the Republican primary for Governor and another for Attorney General in the Democratic primary I am as a matter of law prevented from doing so. I could be charged with a felony for doing so, in which case I might be imprisoned and lose the ability to vote at all.
I could write a check to both candidates, I could display signs or bumper stickers or sweatshirts or hats. I could block walk, or go to rallies. I can do everything to indicate my support but actually vote.”
Right now, you can also likewise support two (or more) candidates of the same party for the same office. Let’s say your interest in a given contest is not in having your preferred candidate win, but in having your least preferred candidate lose. Let’s say there are 3 candidates running as Republicans for Governor. You find one of them to be unacceptable. As it stands, you can write checks to the other two, help put out their campaign signs, go to their rallies, etc. Or, perhaps you really don’t care who wins at all, but you want to have some sway with the winner, whoever it is. Then you might write checks, attend rallies, and so on, for all three candidates. But you can’t vote for all three, and if I’m not mistaken, you have not proposed anything that would change that.
@Jim Riley: And, of course, you can’t vote in EITHER primary here in Tex-ass if you want to sign a third-party ballot access petition.
https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overruled/
SCOTUS opins later OVER-ruled
— subject involved — Const [esp] / law / treaty — NOT shown – super- UN-fortunate
find shortest / longest time spans
—-
mere about 7 years LATE now in getting bound volumes with *final* *U.S* cites.
Opins longer than ever- saying less and less ???
commie hacks – States dead – via perversions of 1-8-1 Gen. welfare cl and 1-8-3 inter-state commerce cl
fascist hacks – States on day to day life support.
N: again, no one disputes that precedents, including long standing precedents, sometimes get overruled. It’s still relatively rare, especially in such a big manner. Demo Rep doesn’t have time to answer questions or file lawsuits or anything else, because if he just repeats his little known acronyms in this blogs comment section enough times and insults people enough, someone else will for sure file the lawsuits he’s nit filing.
N2: like maybe third parties, even though if his lawsuits ever did get filed and won, it would go directly against their interests for reasons explained above.
Q: does this sound like a good action plan to anyone here?
Q: did I get any of that wrong? If so, which parts?
N: since demo rep “doesn’t have time” to answer my questions, perhaps one or more other people do. Thanks to demo rep for answering the first few. I learned a few things from the dialogue, even if it’s too late for him to learn anything.
Socratic Gadfly brings up another good point. Under current Texas law, you can’t legally sign a ballot access petition for a third party if you also vote in a primary where the offices to be elected overlap. I would add that same law precludes you from legally signing ballot access petitions for more than one third party in the same election (a prohibition most states don’t have).
Yet, you can still show support for a major party and a minor party in the same election in other ways Jim Riley outlined, such as donating money, attending rallies, distribution of materials, and so on. There are documented cases where this has happened, and it’s perfectly legal.
The legal theory as I understand it is that signing a ballot access petition, voting in a primary, or being a delegate at a nominating convention are all in essence equivalent to declaring which party or candidate you support. Yet, you can support multiple parties, or multiple candidates of the same party, even for the same office, in other ways – donations, etc.
There seems to be some discrepancy between how states view voting for a candidate – showing exclusive support – and other forms of support like donations, which are not exclusive. Texas places ballot access petitions in the exclusive category, whereas most states do not.
All states do, however, have some forms of support which are exclusionary and some that are not. In top x states and proposals you can only vote for one candidate per office but you can donate to more than one, for example. In ranked choice voting you can support more than one candidate for the same office, but you don’t get the option to rank them equally, whereas you can cut the exact same amount check to as many of them as you want, etc .
@QNA,
I understand your question to be “why should there be government run primaries?”. The obvious answer to your literal question is so that so the major parties maintain control. It also forces individual voters to identify with a political party to be able to vote.
If candidates run as individuals, groups of persons whether organized as parties or on ad hoc basis could support them. There is no need for the state to get involved, including recognizing political parties.
In Texas special elections, political parties may be involved, perhaps encouraging or discouraging candidates, but there is no formal recognition.
@SG,
Party affiliation in Texas is only a participation restriction. You can either go to a precinct convention or vote in a primary. The Democrats were required to nominate by primary. Other parties could have primaries, bit rarely did. The Republicans only had a primary a few times in the first half of the 20th Century. There was no level of support to qualify candidates for the general election ballot, but you to actually hold the conventions.
Parties had to pay for their primaries, through filing fees and contributions. I suspect that a good many poll workers donated their time. Primaries and conventions were on Saturday, and after the votes were counted, voters would go to the precinct convention, usually at the same location.
@Jim … I was referring to before the Greens were ballot qualified, more than 15 years ago, as a party. Couldn’t vote in a Dem (or GOP) primary and sign a Green ballot access petition to get on the general. And, thanks to Drew Springer, if the Greens lose ballot access, that same rule is still in place.
primary gangs = factions / fractions of PUBLIC electors/voters
thus the PUBLIC interest/involvement in primaries.
see now olde TX white primary cases 1928-1932
@SG,
It used to be that primary elections and precinct conventions were on the same (Satur)day. Precinct conventions were literally called “primary conventions”. As you probably know, “primary” is an adjective meaning first, not a noun meaning election to make partisan nominations.
Any party, including new parties, could make nomination by convention or by primary. Only the Democrats were required to nominate by primary. The parties had to pay for their own nomination activities.
Since party affiliation was simply a participation restriction, it makes sense that if you voted in the Democratic Primary, you could not attend a Republican (or Socialist or Populist or Progressive) primary convention the same night.
It was only much later that they added a participation requirement. The petition was intended to represent persons who could have attended a precinct convention but didn’t.
Sleepy Joe cheated. We need Trump back so badly right now! 2024 can’t come soon enough. Honestly we can’t wait that long.
Matt Gaetz says he will nominate Donald Trump for Speaker of the House after the Republican Party takes control after the 2022 mid-term elections. Even though Trump is not likely to be a sitting member of the House at the time, the Constitution does not require the Speaker be a sitting member of the House even though every single one in the past has been. If the Republican caucus gets behind Trump and makes him the speaker that would make him second in line to the presidency assuming both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris remain president and vice president at the time.
If Biden is still in office and Kamala has not yet been run out of town then both Biden and Kamala would need to be impeached and removed with 67 Senate votes for Trump to become President again. If Biden dies or resigns for health purposes then only Kamala would need to be impeached and removed which would probably be easy given how unpopular she is. If Kamala resigns, as she reportedly has been considering, and Biden is unable to fill the vice presidential vacancy either due to his own ineptitute or his party’s lack of a majority in the two houses, then Trump would be the next in line to the presidency. If Biden then dies, resigns, or is forcibly removed by the 25th Amendment or an impeachment conviction, Trump would become president once again.
Trump would then be able to run again in 2024 for another four year term. Theoretically, Trump could be President a total of 10 years, the most of any since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He could be in office until 2029. The Democrats did this to themselves. If the Democrats hadn’t cheated in 2020, Trump would be leaving office in 2025 rather than starting his second term.
Great analysis, Fact Checker. I fully concur.