On July 26, the West Virginia Secretary of State ruled that the Constitution Party nominee for U.S. Senate, Don Blankenship, cannot be on the November ballot even though he has enough valid signatures. The Secretary of State invoked the law, passed this year, that says a candidate cannot petition to be on the November ballot if he was a registered member of a qualified party at any time during that year. See this story.
Blankenship will sue, arguing that the prior disaffiliation law cannot be applied to him because it did not exist until June 2018. Courts generally hold that due process prevents a state from making ballot access more difficult, in the middle of the petitioning period. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed one of these decisions in 1977, Hudler v Austin, a Michigan case.
There are now two states in which Constitution Party nominees must go to court to be on the ballot, because the party’s nominees for some offices had run in major party primaries. In each case, the law cited by states to keep them off the ballot was not passed until after the Constitution Party had nominated its candidates. The other such state is North Carolina.
The candidates did not /have/ to run in the primary of another party.
One more retroactive machination by the ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymander oligarchs.
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NO primaries. caucuses and conventions.
PR and AppV
How soon before the HACK oligarchs enact laws to retroactively prohibit ALL opposition on coming election ballots ???
See commie and nazi so-called *elections*.
Which oligarch machination WILL CAUSE Civil WAR II ???
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See earlier –
1773 UK Tea Tax law >>> Am Rev WAR
1854 Kansas-Nebraska law >>> Civil WAR I
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PR and Appv — to END the rule of monarchs/oligarchs
— ie barbarian savage spider/reptile brain monsters — posing as humans.
That is an incorrect statement/argument that the “sore loser law” did not exist prior to this year. The particular language has been a part of 3-5-23 since at least last year. See: http://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Text_HTML/2017_SESSIONS/RS/Bills/hb2798%20intr.htm
What they did this year was just to amend section (f) by replacing the spelled out words for section three-one-eight with the numerals 3-1-8.
The winning argument is unequal application of the law where the Secretary of State is playing favorites and allowing not one, but TWO “sore loser” county commission candidates (Susie Worley Jenkins, Fayette County and David Tabb, Jefferson County) to switch parties just exactly like Don Blankenship did and file for the same office as Mountain Party candidates after losing their respective Democrat and Republican primaries. The only difference between the Mountain and Constitution Parties is that the Mountain Party is a recognized ballot-qualified party (nominates by convention) and the Constitution Party is non ballot-qualified (nominated by petition).