New Haven, Connecticut, has partisan city elections. The Democratic primary for Mayor and other city offices is September 12, 2023.
On August 16, a Democratic candidate for Mayor, Shafiq Abdussabur, was told that he didn’t have enough valid signatures. He needed 1,623 and was told he only had 1,406. Many signatures were rejected because they were illegible. However, Abdussabur re-valided enough signatures, using his own volunteers, and filed a lawsuit that same day, trying to show he does have enough valid signatures. Abdussabur v Evans.
The hearing was on August 23. At the hearing, the city clerk argued that the Purcell Principle prohibits the court from putting Abdussabur on the ballot. This is a false argument. “The Purcell Principle” came into being in 2006, when the Ninth Circuit had enjoined Arizona’s voter id procedures, and the U.S. Supreme Court had then quickly stayed the order of the Ninth Circuit on the grounds that voting procedures should not be changed too close to an election. Purcell v Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1.
Now the notion has been spreading that the Purcell Principle means candidates cannot be added to the ballot too close to an election. But voting procedures are a different subject than the list of candidates on the ballot. It is obvious from past U.S. Supreme Court precedent that there is no constitutional principle that keeps candidates who had been unjustly barred from the ballot from seeking last-minute relief. In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that George Wallace should stay on the Ohio ballot in October 15, 1968. In 1976 the U.S. Supreme Court put Eugene McCarthy on the ballot as an independent in Texas on September 30. And most radical of all, in 1992 the U.S. Supreme Court put the Harold Washington Party on the Cook County, Illinois ballot, on October 25, only two weeks before the election.
Here is an article about the New Haven hearing. The ballots have not yet been printed, except for some absentee ballots.
All way too complicated and unnecessary.
PURCELL P = ONE MORE SCOTUS INVENTION OUT OF THIN AIR — ESP FOR ELECTIONS.
REDO ALL ILLEGAL ELECTIONS —
MUCH TOO DIFFICULT FOR SCOTUS HACKS.
FIX ALL ELECTION LAWS X DAYS BEFORE GENERAL ELECTION DAY.
ESP TO VERIFY PET SIGS.
WHAT PCT ARE CHECKED ??? 1 IN 100 ???
SOLVE FOR X.
—
PART OF P-A-T
Verify signatures of pets? Now I heard everything.
PORCUS –
HEARD OF EX-PREZS BEING CHARGED IN STATE ELECTION / RICO CASES ??? —
WATING FOR TRUMP MUG SHOT IN GA LATER TODAY.
Candidates that are sloppy in anything shouldn’t be on the ballot. Bad leadership plus it shows signs of unprofessionalism. We got Chris Christie as a prime example of a PIG!
This is why ballot qualification should be by personal appearance and nonpartisan. There is no chance of illegible signatures, incorrect addresses, unregistered voters, “wrong” party, etc.
@BDLU
The candidate’s complaint blames the registrar, not the candidate. Also, freedom from mistakes is not a constitutional right and not within human capacity.
@Jim Riley
Are you talking about eliminating the petition option? Or are you asking supporters of a candidate to visit their town hall?
@Richard
The most radical example you provided was 2 weeks before the election. This New Haven hearing was less than 3 weeks before the primary, and the decision is still in the future. Where is the line drawn?
Of course i heard of the bogus and obscene ridiculous persecutions of President Trump. He irks the establishment, but no matter what lies, smears, and legal BS they throw at him, he trumps them every time. As they grow increasingly desperate their tactics grow ever more extreme, but he’s always ahead of the establishment evildoers. Beep beep!
Christie should be the new white house food taster.
Jim Riley – a step in the right direction as far as personal appearance. We disagree about nonpartisan. Perhaps about ballots vs voice vote, although you were I believe who brought it to my attention that voice vote was once common in US elections.
Adam Cerini, from past Jim Riley comments, I gleaned he means supporters to visit courthouse.
Note my system or proposal also dispenses with all the forms of error Jim identified, plus any from tabulation of votes.
If AZ didn’t already know everything, he might be bothered to look up statistically representative valid sampling, sampling error, etc. Unlike his political “science” (entirely political and not at all science), statistical methodology actually is science, arrived at through continual application of scientific method.
MILLIONS IN RUSSIA IN THE STREETS [ESP AROUND KREMLIN IN MOSCOW] DEMANDING MAXZIM FORMS OF GOVT ???
WHAT PUTIN FRAUD SQUAD WILL LOOK AT P PLANE WRECK FOR 1 MINUTE OR LESS ???
Of course not. At least I have a few readers here who think I’m on the right track. I’ve seen no evidence of such support for your endlessly repeated rote.
Write-in ballots can be printed anytime because there are no candidate names to print. No names, no access quotas, no fees, no deadlines, no censorship. Oh, too much power to the voters and too little to the incumbent fascists.
In person voice voting doesn’t require printing anything.
@AC,
Supporters would be required to appear at the city hall. I have suggested 1/20 of 1% of the previous vote with a cap of 50, and a floor of five. In the 2019 mayoral election there were 17,443 votes cast, so this would would be 9 persons. If we use the 2022 gubernatorial results of 24,009, this would be 13 persons.
The apparent requirement of 1623 signatures is insane, much less that the campaign gathered 2700 just to be sure. In court, the candidate was claiming only 40% of the signatures were invalid, while the registrar said 50% were bad.
In New Haven “qualified” parties may nominate a candidate by caucus. If you are not in the Top 1, you may petition to force a primary. This petitioning nonsense is to force an actual Democrat primary.
@Max,
I don’t know how common viva voce voting was. The voting method may have depended on the method used in the area of England that settlers emigrated from.
When Congress was considering the manner of elections for US Senator, representatives from New England wanted a secret ballot because that was how their elections for the legislature were conducted. A representative from Kentucky objected and said that voting should be done like they did, where a voter would orally state their vote. This is possibly also due to higher levels of illiteracy. You may or may not think of this as a vote of the ayes and nays, where the presiding officer first makes a determination based on who is loudest. They may now proceed to a showing of hands where as they are counted, they are lowered, or a standing count where the delegates count off, “one, two, three, …, eighty-seven, …, etc.”
Instead a voter would come forward and be recognized (since everyone knew their neighbors) and announce that they wanted to vote for David Crockett or Henry Clay, etc. Tellers would mark off the vote.
Your requirements are a lot less reasonable in reality than they sound. They’re easy enough for better known, financed and connected candidates and those backed by well organised and financed factions. Not so much for outsiders just trying to get a toehold.
In practice, it would work out a lot like petitioning; instead of campaign volunteers gathering signatures from candidate or party supporters, in reality the bulk is paid contractors gathering signatures from members of the general public who may or may not have some idea of what they’re signing by annoying enough people long enough to get enough valid signatures by any means necessary with plausible deniability by campaigns and multilevel contractors. The Riley method would likewise end up being campaigns with enough resources hiring people with time on their hands (retirees, homemakers, unemployed, students, late shift workers, sporadically employed, etc) to stand in court for them, regardless of original intent or any statements under oath. Despite that, it’s still less irrational than what the petition method has turned into in practice.
VERY EARLY ON IN ALL OLDE BRIT COLONIES –
ALL ADULT MALES SHOWED UP TO ELECT TOP OFFICERS –
POP GROWTH >>> GERRYMANDER ELECTIONS FOR LEGIS BODIES.
—
VA 1607 START >>> 1618 1ST GERRYMANDER ELECTION
P-A-T
@Max,
Australia has an interesting method of applying sampling. A party must have a certain number of members to qualify for an election. I think it is 1500 nationwide. With that number, they can run for every House and Senate seat.
The party supplies a list of members (at least 1500 to a maximum of 1650) in an electronic format. Since Australia has mandatory registration it can be expected that any party member is also registered and with a known address.
The election authorities can authenticate the membership roll, including checking for name change or address change.
They then contact a sample of the “members”. If the party supplied a bare minimum of members, then more will have to be checked. If they provide the minimum extra then it is likely that if they supplied a quality membership, relative few will need to be checked.
Checking is done by actually contacting the member/voter. Mrs. Smith, are you a member of the Max Plan Party?
This avoids the need for the government maintaining records of the political beliefs of its citizens, and encourages parties to have an actual active membership.
Jim Riley, thanks for the additional history. The Kentucky method is better, and less susceptible to tabulation fraud. It’s also better because voting is political power, and power without accountability is bad. Voting for politicians, parties or issues should be in the record for the same reasons that voting by politicians should be in the record.
Neighbors ought to be accountable to each other for who they help elect, just as politicians should be accountable to the voters. Contra idiotic assumptions made by some when I’ve said this in the past, I’m in no way suggesting violence or any other extreme social sanctions for voting incorrectly, either directed at politicians or voters. The fact that such an idea would even occur to anyone is a result of politics and government becoming far too involved in far too many things and therefore far too important to far too many people. If I’m correct about better incentive structures under my proposals, government would be far too insignificant for political passions to run nearly that high. Social sanctions would be much more mild – disapproving looks and remarks, or even fear thereof, that sort of thing.
While the Kentucky method is better for counting votes, the New England town meeting continues to be an inspiration for a number of my ideas. Voting more locally, in person, on the record, in front of neighbors cuts out a lot of what has gone wrong over the course of a quarter millennium with your nevertheless still admirable national political experiment.
AZ, not all adult males. Specifically, it was property owning men over 21. The importance of this has generally been lost since then. The majority of free Whites owned property (an estimate I read recently said 70 to 80 percent around the time of your revolution). However, excluding those who lacked the industriousness to acquire and keep property was an important failsafe which has since been lost. It kept the lazy and indolent from voting themselves the proceeds of the hard labour of others, thus triggering a vicious cycle of ever growing numbers quitting the ranks of the looted to join the side of the looters.
The other since foregone exclusions were also important. A 21 year old man was generally then the head of a household, gainfully employed, married with several children – a rarity for 21 year olds now, much less 18 year olds. It was about the midlife point in terms of average lifespans, approximately equivalent to age 40 or so in the modern life cycle.
It was important that each property owning household was represented by one and only one vote. It was important that the men voting had achieved a certain level of maturity and responsibility which is quite the exception in people of that age now. Limiting the vote franchise in even just those ways would go a very long way towards solving the subsequent political dysfunctions.
Scale was also very important. A million or two eligible voters spread over 13 colonies, later states, allowed for voters and representatives to know each other personally, by reputation, and have personal interactions. This is no longer the case in your present system. Representatives are far removed from the people, people are alienated from each other and the land, and individual voters have insignificant input into political decisions which become ever more complicated; the politicians don’t have time to read what they vote on, much less people whose full time job and training is in other fields.
You see the subsequent egalitarianization of the franchise as “progress.” But towards what are you progressing? All evidence points to it being a slow road towards gulags and killing fields. You’ve progressed in the wrong direction, and ought to change course rather than continually doubling down. In Europe and elsewhere we’ve already seen where your present course leads.
Jim Riley, that Australian method as you describe it sounds like it’s incrementally towards what I’ve proposed, compared with what you now have in the States. My proposal simplifies that down even further.
AZ is also off by about 200 years. Gerry’s salamander was in the 19th century, not the 17th.
GERRYMANDERS BACK TO LATE 1200S —
OLDE ENGLISH HOUSE OF COMMONS.
SOME DE-POPULATED OVER CENTURIES >>> *ROTTEN BOROUGHS* [OFTEN UNDER 50 VOTERS] — OFTEN CONTROLLED BY A MONARCH / LORD.
MAJOR REFORM IN 1832 REFORM ACT — NOW MORE EQUAL POP GERRYMANDER DISTS IN UK –
RIGGED MORE THAN EVER TO BE COMMIE LABOUR / FASCIST CONS.
ABOUT 20 PCT REAL MINORITY RULE. — DUE TO VARYING MINOR PARTIES – LIBDEMS, ETC. – AND MINDLESS FIRST PAST THE POST -PLURALITY MATH.
REAL MINORITY RULE – MUCH WORSE DUE TO TOP PARTY MONSTERS PICKING CANDIDATES
—
P-A-T
@Jesse,
In Zambia where that method is used, campaigns hold rallies with bands to demonstrate that they have more than the minimum support. Supporters would be checked off the voter rolls just as happens when they vote. I don’t know where you got this silly idea about standing in court.
AZ, I have good news and bad news.. The good news is I built a time machine and can thus converse with you now, over two centuries after my death. The bad news is that the reverse gear doesn’t work, so I have not visited the 13th or 17th centuries to bestow upon them my invention of the salamander shaped election district. Speaking as a former Vice President, I consider that my greatest regret.
Jim, appearing at city hall, then. Or at a campaign rally with a band. Or taking a crap in the campaign’s designated portapot. The point stands, but my apologies for confusion of details.
@Jesse,
The person preparing the ballot has his office at city hall. It is unremarkable that candidates apply at city hall and supporters show up in person.
How would you have it done?
Max plan sounds pretty ideal. More short term, cut out the pretense that the signatures or appearances represent actual supporters, and make it a simple filing fee. That is what it ends up being in practice anyway, regardless of the pretense games and unneeded paperwork or busywork. Or at least offer it as an option. Access by party rather than by candidate is also doable short term, and should be done.
@Jesse,
If you couldn’t get 13 persons to go to the city hall to support your candidacy for mayor of New Haven you don’t have much if any support. What would be the price of ballot access for New Haven mayor?
Access by party gets the state involved in keeping track of how many voters have enrolled with a party, or who controls the party. If you were to run for mayor, the Lib Dems could organize support, including helping you get 13 voters to go to city hall with you. They might also paint “Jesse for Max Plan” signs.
The state can keep track of who controls each party. What the cost to register a party should be isn’t my area of expertise. What should be the number of people appearing or number of signatures? Idk. Hopefully a reasonable number that lets new and little known parties get on the ballot and start gathering support.
@AZ,
Why should the state keep track of political parties? The purpose of having party qualification is so those in political power can classify those not in power as “unqualified”.
IT’S A PURGE LIST!!!
The state keeps track of PACs and other groups which raise and spend money on politics, not just parties which get a place on the ballot. It keeps track of any entities, political or not, which raise, receive, or spend money under an entity name.
For smaller parties, access by party makes a lot more sense than access by candidate.