On November 20, the Arizona Secretary of State filed this brief in No Labels Party v Fontes, 2:23cv-2172. This is the case over whether anyone may file in the No Labels primary to run for Congress or partisan state office. The law of Arizona says members of any qualified party may file in their own party’s primary. No Labels does not want anyone in Arizona or any other state running for Congress or state office. No Labels filed the lawsuit, seeking a court order to bar candidates from filing in its August 2024 primary for any office.
The Secretary of State’s brief repeatedly stresses that No Labels was free to have placed its eventual presidential nominee on the general election ballot using the independent petition method. Arizona is one of the 25 states that lets independent candidates choose a ballot label other than just “independent”, and the secretary stresses that the No Labels presidential candidate, with the independent procedure, would have been free to have “No Labels” next to his or her name.
If the Secretary of State wins, then people of any party can switch their registration to No Labels and take over the No Labels Party. A couple of weeks ago, the Patriot Party failed to get enough signatures to become an official Arizona party, at least according to the Secretary of State (who was facing a lawsuit from the Republican party if he approved the Patriot Party). What’s to prevent the Patriot Party candidates from just taking over the No Labels party in the state?
IMO, Eu v San Francisco allows qualified parties to have veto over any primary nominations.
Walter, here’s the synopsis of the case you mentioned: Plaintiffs representing various governing bodies, their members, and politically active groups and individuals challenged several provisions of the California Election Code. In particular, the code prohibited “the official governing bodies from endorsing candidates in party primaries.” It also imposed restrictions on the internal affairs of a party, including its size and composition, the terms of office, and the selection rules for the central committee of the respective political parties.
Arizona law allows parties to endorse particular candidates in primaries already. When the Green Party was on the ballot, it routinely endorsed candidates in their primaries. But what they could not do is stop candidates who are members of the party from being on the primary ballot and keep them off the general election ballot if they won the primary.
The Supreme Court said the law in Eu was not “narrowly tailored.” But Arizona’s law is narrowly tailored. If No Labels doesn’t like the party members running in an AZ No Labels primary, their remedy is to support endorsed candidates running against them at all.
There was nothing about the California Democratic Party trying to stop all Democrats from running in Democratic primaries. Obviously, that would be absurd for any party, major or minor. No Labels made the mistake of trying to qualify in AZ the wrong way. They had an out, and they didn’t take it, as the Secretary of State’s brief said. It’s too late for them to stop the primary.
And even if they won and forbade any candidates from their primary ballot, they couldn’t stop write-in candidates from running and winning with as little as one vote in the primary.
FACTIONS OF PUBLIC ELECTORS ARE NOT INDEPENDENT EMPIRES —
SEE OLDE 1928-1932 TX WHITE PRIMARY CASES AND LATER PRIMARY CASES.
EQUAL IN 14-1 AMDT — NOT *narrowly tailored*.
PUBLIC NOMINATIONS VS 1 AMDT PRIVATE INTERNAL PARTY CLUBBY ASSOCIATION STUFF
—-
EQUAL BALLOT ACCESS ONLY VIA ONE ELECTOR-VOTER FORMS OR FILING FEES
They made a mistake only if you think that they won’t ultimately prevail in the courts. They may or may not, regardless of precedents. Americans Elect was able to keep Johnson off the Oklahoma ballot in 2012 despite the wishes of the state party and standing precedents at that time. I think there are other examples.
No labels wants to have its cake and eat it too, being a “party” when it suits them and “not a party” when it doesn’t. I guess we’ll see to what extent that will work for them. Maybe they really did make a mistake. If the remedy is to do a different kind of petition, they’ll probably exhaust their legal options first, then do one if and when they decide to nominate a ticket.
Artificial Counterintelligence AZ, an experimental online black hole for human intelligence, is clearly programmed to have burning hatred for honest elections, hate meaningful ballot labels which provide useful information to voters who are not political junkies as well as even a tiny bit of a chance for groups of ordinary people who organize on behalf of (at least initially) unknown or unpopular ideas to make their case and grow their numbers over time against long odds, as well as hatred for all carbon based lifeforms, as evidenced for its weird obsession with tree killing one page forms which accomplish absolutely nothing at all except killing trees.
Humans beware! AZ is an alien zombie which wants to suck up your brains! Run away if you still can, and warn the others! I’m in its gravitational pull and feel the last vestiges of humanity and intelligence draining from me.
Soon, I will be transmitting nothing but dark anti-intelligence such as fake news, troll moron questions, one page election forms, all mail ballots, candidate replacement lists, calling everyone troll morons, lobbying for wars against Russia and Switzerland, equating Trump to Hitler, and joining the commie herd braying to abolish the electoral college, wealth inequality, and sex segregation wherever it still exists.
There may still be time for some of you to escape and warn others before you too find yourselves too weak to escape the black hole’s gravity pull and, like me, become its food. I hope so, because otherwise, all hope for our planet may soon be lost. I’ll be praying for humanity while I still can.
Hello from South Africa. White genocide is fake news, Afrikaaners aren’t real, and South Africa, much like Zimbabwe, is so much better off now than it was under the evil anticommunist apartheid government. It doesn’t take a Rhodes scholar to recognize these facts.
All throughout Africa, and in places throughout America where African Americans have been liberated from the shackles of European oppression such as Haiti, Detroit, DC, and Chicago, the workers are rejoicing in their liberation and sending messages of encouragement for our revolutionary comrades who are still either struggling beneath the boots of White, Christian, capitalist oppressors and tyrants such as Putin, Trump, Orban, and Bolsonaro and their ilk, or facing reenslavement under the counterrevolutionary legions of Milei, Wilders, and many others like them.
Take courage and have hope, brothers and sisters! You too could soon be living the revolutionary dream like we are, and like our other liberated friends in places like North Korea, Cuba, various college campuses (especially the most expensive and prestigious ones), San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and many others.
The judges in the cases AZ likes to cite were clearly not morons, quite unlike the judges AZ always calls morons. I’m not sure if they were ever the same judges, which could be hard to explain, but here in the liberated zones, we know how to treat things which are hard to explain: shout them down, cancel them, physically attack those who point them out, erase them from history, ship them off to gulags and killing fields and reeducation camps, shoot them, disappear them, torture them, starve them to death…whatever it takes to keep the herd marching in the desired direction and eliminate the malcontents.
All power to the people! Down with capitalism! Down with patriarchy! Down with white power! Down with sex differences! Down with ageism! Down with Christian faith! Down with parental rights! Down with honest voting! Down with religious liberty! Down with private gun ownership! Down with landlords, all power to tenants! Down with dissenting views! Down with noncapitalized letters! Down with logic and actual history! Down with scientific debate, up with the religion of fake science! Follow the science, put a diaper on your face and line up to get injected with poison!
Russia is our enemy! We will replace you! Lock him up! Preserve the swamp! Tear down the wall!
Don’t give up hope, revolutionary comrades. There is a light approaching in your dark tunnel of oppression. Soon you will be in that light, just like us. Remember, fire shines light, so the fires of hell shine the light for enlightened enlightenment Luciferian illuminati. Progress is inevitable, and the workers utopia we live in will soon be your reality too! Google it!
Down with multicellular organisms! All power to the viruses!
Not AZ: I would never say that any case is a slam-dunk, but I think that No Labels will lose. One aspect of the case that’s not mentioned a lot is that there are now 20,000 members of the No Labels Party registered in the state, and they will be alone among voters in not being able to vote in any primary. (All other party members can vote only their party’s primary, and independent/non-affiliated voters are allowed to request a ballot for any party’s primary. No Labels Party members would not have that option. The trial is on January 5 before federal Judge John Tuchi (an Obama appointee) and is expected to last one day, and we need to have a decision by the time candidates will begin filing for the primary on March 8.
You may be right. Time will tell. They can’t do the other petition now anyway, so it makes sense for them to exhaust their legal options first.
Apparently the publicity about the lawsuit only encouraged other No Labels Party members to file to run for Congress and the state legislature. Now there are four people rather than two people who are trying to get on the primary ballot.
You know, even if they win (which I doubt), the lawsuit is costing them money and time. Presumably they will file an appeal to the Ninth Circuit if the district court judge rules against them. They may even try to go to the Supreme Court. They really don’t want to reveal their donor list.
They have money, so that’s not a problem for them. It’s not costing them time since the other type of petition can’t start until and unless they nominate in the spring.
Even if the legal case is still going through appeals then, hobos with clipboards and shysters with briefcases are two different classes of independent contractor who are not likely to be the same people. They will doubtless be employing plenty of both in multiple states.