On August 2, a Notice of Motion and a Memorandum of Law in Support of Motion to Intervene as Plaintiffs in the Team Kennedy v. Berger, et al. lawsuit was filed in US District Court in the Southern District of New York.
In that litigation, Team Kennedy challenges (1) the law stating that a petition signer can sign only a petition for one candidate for a given office, (2) the law that prohibits petition signers from listing their village instead of their city or town, (3) the requirement that an Independent presidential candidate’s slate of electors be listed on his or her petition when partisan candidates do not need to name electors until after their national nominating conventions, (4) the requirement to gather 45,000 valid signatures in just six weeks, and (5) the prohibition of paying petition circulators and witnesses on a per signature basis.
The Motion states that the LP & GP have interests aligned with Team Kennedy but are not adequately represented by Team Kennedy’s attorneys, therefore, the ability to intervene in this litigation with their own counsel is being asked of the court.
Here are the documents filed on behalf of the Libertarian and Green parties.
ANY MENTION OF 1954 BROWN V BD OF ED IN THE FILED DOCS ???
MERE 70 YEARS AGO
Abolish the censorship of voters by ballot access laws. Duopoly politicians really do fear voters know the politicians are frauds.
The fact that 2 and 3 still exist to even be challenged, is beyond appalling.
@Nuña,
(3) New York permits multiple candidates to be listed on a petition. This includes the elector candidates. What is the problem is candidates like Harris, Walz, Vance, and Trump do not need to circulate petitions.
(2) Villages in New York do not correspond to voter rolls. Every person resides in a town (or city – which is a town equivalent). You may be confused by the terms “village” and “town”.
ANTI-DEMOCRACY MINORITY RULE GERRYMANDERS USED TO RIG ELECT ALL STATE LEGIS —
1/2 X 1/2 = 1/4 OLIGARCHY
SUPER-WORSE PRIMARY EXTREMIST MATH
— ALONG WITH PARTY HACK EXEC/JUDIC MONARCHS
—
PR
APPV
TOTSOP
@Jim Riley
(3) Indeed, the problem is the double standard. Either require uniparty candidates to submit (not necessarily certify) their slates of electors before the nominating convention (ideally before running in primary elections even), or stop requiring petitions to include electors.
(2) No, I didn’t confuse. Each village is part of a municipality, i.e. the town or city signatories are required to list. But the board of elections knows which villages belong to which municipalities. So what I’m saying is that I therefore don’t see any good reason why signatories should not be allowed list their village instead of their municipality without having their signature invalidated.
@Nuña,
(2) Not all villages in New York are part of a single town.
(3) Better yet would be to let slates of elector qualify. If they all support the same presidential and vice-presidential candidate they can have that appear next to their names. Support should be measured by personal support (1/20 of 1%). In NY, Harris, Stein, Oliver, etc. would need 2951 supporters to show up at county seats.
Kamala Harris will be the excellent president!
@Jim Riley,
(2) If the villages are part of unincorporated townships and the like, then they are still associated to a municipality which keeps their voter rolls, right? Or does the county?
And if the villages are split between multiple municipalities (does that even happen in practice?), then the board of electors has a slightly bigger overhead to consult several municipalities’ voter rolls for anyone who wrote in their village. But it still does not seem like undue burden on the board, while rejecting petitions on that basis seems disenfranchising of signatories.
(3) That’s not a bad idea. Though I wonder how that would affect the frequency of faithless electors. Would they feel emboldened because of having been more directly selected/entrusted as people’s representatives? Or would they be cracked down on all the harder, for having been elected due to the name of the candidate they nominally supported? Or neither?
Kamala Harris is the bomb!
@Nuña,
In New York*, counties are divided into towns. At least historically, counties and towns are administrative divisions of the state. A sheriff and a court enforce state laws and maintain public order. They can also maintain public records, such as land ownership. In a rural era, there was little need for public services beyond building or maintaining roads passable by wagon or horseback. Rather than taxes, farmers would be assessed labor to build or improve roads. As an area became more populated, new counties and towns would be formed.
In New York, a city is chartered by the state. Until into the 20th Century, the legislature would have to pass laws updating a charter. As a result, New York has very few cities. A city in New York has an area comparable to a town, and would elect its own representatives to a county board of supervisors. So legally, a city is a part of a county treated as a town-equivalent for certain purposes. It would also provide services more appropriate for an urban area – streets, water, sanitation, fire and police protection, etc.
Because it was difficult to create a city, and the whole of a town rarely corresponded to an urban footprint, statutes providing for villages were developed. A village could be created by the residents of an area to provide urban services. Farmers did not want to be taxed for services that they did not need, and village dwellers could determine what services they need.
Villages and towns geographically overlap. A village may span portions of two or more towns, or even multiple counties. There are portions of towns that are not in a village, and many villages have the same name as the town they are in.
In the 20th Century, improved transportation and population growth led to suburbanization. Villages could be readily created, so that in some areas towns are relatively meaningless with respect to popular identity. People might identify with their village or school district or subdivision, or nearest shopping mall, etc. Home rule permits towns and counties to now provide for services that were previously only provided for by cities and villages.
Election services are provided for by County Boards of Election. But it might be that villages organize there own elections. Counties likely organize their voter rolls by town/city, but may notate them additional jurisdictions such as village or school district.
Since all voters have a county and town, it is not irrational to organize them by that basis.
* New York City is _different_, most of the above does not apply.
Everywhere the normal people are for Kamala!
@Jim Riley
“People might identify with their village or school district or subdivision, or nearest shopping mall, etc. […] Counties likely organize their voter rolls by town/city, but may notate them additional jurisdictions such as village or school district.”
And why shouldn’t they, is what I’m trying to convey. The County Boards of Election can track down petition signatories on town/city voter rolls, based on which village, school district or shopping mall the signatory provided. The administrative overhead is not significant enough, in my opinion, to justify rejecting signatures merely because they list a village instead of a city/town – which seems to be the current law. Let those civil servants earn their over-inflated salaries, instead of shifting their burden onto the signatories and petitioners.
That’s the whole point of petition requirements rather than fees, despite lies about voter support. The number of signatures has way more to do with how much money a candidate or party or proposal proponent has than the support. Most signers and most signature gatherers are not supporters. Signature rather than fee just adds the extra hoops of multitudes of unpredictably enforced rules that can be used to invalidate valid signatures and possibly the entire effort after additional costs for bureaucratic and judicial hearings and appeals.
Agreed. But clearly that is not the publicly given excuse, because it would be universally opposed instantly.
Fees are even less indicative of public support than signatures. So what to do?
Abolish all barriers to ballot access and measures? Not the worst idea, but it will lead to flooding of the ballot.
Why not stick with the petition model, but try and make it more pro-signatory and less pro-establishment? Getting rid of 2 and 3 in the above, would be an obvious first step.
Fees don’t need to indicate popular support. That’s what the election is for. Ballot flooding is a made up problem. I’ve seen elections with 100 plus candidates and voters were not confused. California gov recall 21 years ago, for example. And states with virtually no ballot barriers and not very many candidates for any office.
Consumers choose between hundreds of products on market shelves. Churchgoers choose between hundreds of churches. Parents choose from hundreds of schools and colleges for their kids, etc. Those same folks can do the same on election days.
Of course there’s no ballot flooding problem with viva voce or standing count since there’s no ballot.
I would argue the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election is one of the few examples of ballot flooding leading to voter confusions. They elected antisemitic bodybuilder/actor Schwarzenegger for pete’s sake. Nobody in their right mind would want him for governor, not even in commiefornia. He only won because people were overwhelmed by the number of options and his name jumped out as easily recognizable.
Voice votes and standing count votes are no good. If they are not individually counted, then they are prone to error and fraud. And if they are properly counted, they are prone to voter intimidation, blackmail and vote buying, not to mention retaliatory violence against voters. There is no reason secret paper ballots could not be every bit as secure, if not more so, when implemented correctly. The only place for viva voce and standing count is in Congress, because voters deserve to know how their representatives represent them.
The people who wanted Schwarzenegger voted for him. I’ve yet to hear one person contend they could not find the candidate they wanted to vote for on that ballot or checked the wrong box by mistake.
If voters deserve to know how their representatives voted, they also deserve to know how those who elected their representatives voted. And how those who voted on citizen initiative legislation voted.
Otherwise you get unaccountable political power. That’s dangerous. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Social sanction does not have to rise to negative extremes you mentioned. Those are the result of vesting too much power in politics and government.
Viva voce and standing count are less prone to error and fraud than ballots.
“The people who wanted Schwarzenegger voted for him.”
As did the people who didn’t know what they wanted due to being overloaded.
“If voters deserve to know how their representatives voted, they also deserve to know how those who elected their representatives voted. And how those who voted on citizen initiative legislation voted. Otherwise you get unaccountable political power. That’s dangerous.”
Not at all. The representatives must be accountable to those they are supposed to be representing. But that does not apply to voters regarding one another, because they are only voting for themselves, not representing one another.
“Social sanction does not have to rise to negative extremes you mentioned.”
Yet it invariably does. When possible secret votes are always superior.
“Those are the result of vesting too much power in politics and government.”
Having representative democracy instead of real, direct democracy, is already vesting too much power in others. Arguably having a government at all, is. But if we have to go through the charade of representative democracy, then we must at least do it sensibly and safely, i.e. secret votes for everyone except the people’s representatives.
“Viva voce and standing count are less prone to error and fraud than ballots.”
That depends on how the voice/standing votes are implemented, and on how the ballots are. Which is more secure can go either way. But there is no reason why properly implemented ballots would be more prone to error and fraud than properly implemented voice/standing votes.
No, I had it right. Explaining it again won’t change anything. I explained it well enough last time.
Clearly not, since you have not yet explained anything and have now announced that you have no interest in doing so in future.
The fact of the matter is that those elected to represent the people are the only ones whose votes should be public knowledge, because they must be accountable to those they claim to be representing. It’s that simple. There is nothing that can be added or subtracted to change that fact.
Your stubborn failure to understand is not due to me failing to explain. When voters vote on legislation through initiatives they exercise the same power as when politicians do voting on legislation. When they elect politicians to do the job for them, they should be responsible for the actions those politicians take which hurt their neighbors, friends and family, the business and economy of their communities etc. They should be liable to lose their friends and jobs just like the politicians. They should not be liable to violence, which would still be illegal, against voters or politicians.
If there are no consequences for electing the wrong politicians, there are few incentives to vote correctly or even assess the politicians claims and promises and records. Lack of proper incentive leads to bad outcome just as it would if politicians votes were secret for the exact same reasons.
Your stubborn failure to understand the difference between repeating the same erroneous statements over and over again and explaining them, is not due to me failing to give you plenty of opportunities and encouragement to explain yourself.
The only reason representatives should not have a secret vote is because they are representing others who should be able to know whether they are being represented as they wish to be. So in a direct democracy everyone should have a secret ballot.
To equate representatives voting on legislation and the electorate voting on ballot initiatives, is to ignore any difference between representative democracy and direct democracy, between collectivism and individualism.
Voters are not responsible for the actions of the representative they voted for. And losing their job based on how they vote is in fact illegal.
You do not get to dictate what voting “correctly” means. Such totalitarian collectivism is exactly why secret ballots are so important for the protection of individual rights.
There’s no point in explaining what was already explained. The failure to learn is wilful on your part. Society needs a balance of individualism and collectivism to function properly. That’s the point of democracy and government. In the absence of above ground open voting, lazy voters pay little attention to elections, and are easily manipulated into voting for lying, entrenched politicians and the candidates of lying, entrenched political factions. There are no personal consequences for such lazy voting.
Communities – employers, churches, families, friends and neighbors – should have a role in dictating what voting correctly means, which would help ensure government which is more harmonious with the interests of families, local businesses, community safety from crime, good neighborly behavior, public morality, etc.
Individuals should still have the ability to ignore that community disapproval and vote their conscience, but with consequences such as losing friends and jobs, which should be legal.
Consequences such as violence or imprisonment should not be legal. That would be going too far. Individualism does have a role in balance with collectivism, which is why I oppose totalitarianism and dictatorship as well overboard extreme individualism and anarchy/chaos.
We need distribution of power through public-private partnership balances as well as balance between levels and branch’s of government. That is not totalitarian. Totalitarian means total concentration of power in centralized government.
The current government we have is more totalitarian than what I support, due to dishonest manipulation. It artificially isolates people from families, extended family, neighbors, and the other traditional cohesive social methods of organic order. It creates incentives for people to move around, including long distances and internationally. Isolated individuals are more easy to manipulate so politicians and bureaucrats don’t really face the true consequences they should because voters don’t pay nearly enough attention to those.
Incidentally, another thought just came to me based on you pointing out that currently dismissing an employee is illegal based on how they vote.
Employees have been given disproportionate power in the employer-employee relationship by our current distorted government. It should be at will, with both sides equally able to terminate the relationship at any time at will. Just like friendship, membership in a church, membership in a club of any kind, etc.
Either side should be able to walk away or kick the other out at any time for any reason or just because they feel like it. Employers should have just as much right to hire who they choose and discriminate on any basis they want – looks, race, age, sex, political views, religion, personal chemistry, anything – as employees have to discriminate on any basis in choosing who to work for, and it should be no different with existing employees than applicants.
I would make an exception for marriages with children. No fault divorce should be fine unless there are children or the wife is pregnant. Once there are children in the marriage, there should be no more no fault divorce.
Government has created these imbalances because they make individuals easier to isolate, and thus manipulate, which leads back to individuals with no adequate incentive to exercise adequate oversight of government. That’s what lets government operate effectively in the dark even when what it does is public information. It may as well not be public information when so few people have the incentive to pay enough attention.
I would make one other exception to all forms of relationships and memberships being at will on both/all sides, which is border/travel and immigration control. I would it extend it to all levels of government, not just international.