Georgia Newspaper Story about Libertarian Attempt to Get on 2022 Ballot for One U.S. House Seat

This news story concerns Angela Pence, the Libertarian nominee for U.S. House in Georgia’s 14th district U.S. House race. She needs about 23,000 valid signatures and has 4,000 so far. The deadline is in mid-July. As the article explains, no minor party candidate for a regularly-scheduled U.S. House election has ever appeared on the ballot since before 1943, the year the current law was passed.

The article does not say that the lawsuit against that law is still alive. Nor does it mention the fact that two Georgia precedents say that when the petition period is shorter than usual, due to late redistricting, the requirement must be relaxed.


Comments

Georgia Newspaper Story about Libertarian Attempt to Get on 2022 Ballot for One U.S. House Seat — 14 Comments

  1. 23,000 valid petition sigs out of a US House district for a US House candidate is an INSANELY difficult requirement.

  2. The US District Court said it is unconstitutional, but the Eleventh Circuit said it is constitutional because “it is not severe.” That was an absurd conclusion, given that no US House candidate in any state, in all history, has ever complied with such a high number of signatures.

  3. They have the final say, unless the Supreme Court overrules them, which they won’t. The lawsuit which is still alive, should it succeed, will meet a similar fate in the 11th. They’ll find the reasoning to reach that conclusion one way or another.

  4. Realist, when the remaining part of the case reaches the Eleventh Circuit, it may have a different set of judges, compared to the earlier panel. Remember the Eleventh Circuit in 2017 agreed with a U.S. District Court that Georgia’s 1% presidential petition was too difficult. Sad to say, the chief determinant of how a ballot access constitutional case goes depends on which judges are on the panel. Today the US Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Nancy Abudu, one of President Biden’s choices for the Eleventh Circuit. She is excellent on voting rights.

  5. “the chief determinant of how a ballot access constitutional case goes depends on which judges are on the panel.”

    True, but….The overall trend is now in the other direction. It didn’t use to be, until fairly recently. There are still victories you can point to here and there. But the trend is more and more recognizable. Instead of two steps forward, one step back, it’s now more and more one step forward, two steps back.

  6. If commie Biden’s handlers picked her, you know she’s terrible and knows nothing about the Constitution.

  7. Communists should be dropped from helicopters, not elevated to positions of power.

  8. So, it seems some of the commenters don’t support ballot access voting rights. Nancy Abudu is a specialist in election law and she has excellent attitudes about ballot access. For anyone to say “she’s terrible” must mean that that commenter doesn’t support fair ballot access laws; or maybe it means the commenter doesn’t know anything about her.

    It is not true that “the overall trend” is against ballot access. We win more cases than we lose. The number of signatures to get on the ballot in all states for president, using the easier method, has declined steadily during the last 50 years. For 2012, the number of signatures divided by the number of votes cast for president was .55%. For 2016, it was .45%. For 2020, it was .36%.

  9. It’s a more recent trend which is not yet apparent from your cherry picked statistic, which you would be the first to know represents one tiny sliver of all the different things you cover here.

  10. Richard Winger is a communist so of course he supports all of Biden’s appointees. Winger has never denied his love of communism.

  11. EQUAL STILL IN 14-1 AMDT.

    TOO MANY LP JUNK LAWYERS TO COUNT SINCE 1968 WILLIAMS V RHODES.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.