Last month, the Bread and Roses Party filed a petition to be a qualified party in Maryland. It submitted approximately 15,000 signatures, but was told that it only has 9,773 valid signatures. The requirement is 10,000 signatures.
On September 5, the party’s founders filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that it is unconstitutional to invalidate signatures just because the signer failed to include his or her middle initial. Without the law requiring the signature on the petition to exactly match the name on the voter registration form, the party would have had enough valid signatures. Segal v Maryland State Board of Elections, 1:18cv-2731.
The lawsuit also challenges the “sore loser” law, because the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate, Jerome Segal, had run in this year’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. The case is assigned to Judge George Hazel, an Obama appointee. The case is pro se. Here is the Complaint.
The State Board of Elections will permit the Bread and Roses Party to continue gathering signatures, and if it gets another 227 valid signatures, the entire petition will be approved and can be used to put the party on the ballot for the 2020 election.
Is there any information about the Bread and Roses Party iself? Given the name it sounds vaguely socialist, but this is the first time I’ve heard of it.
Why print the names of parties or candidates on the ballot? A content-neutral ballot would list only the offices to be filled with space for the voter to write their preferred candidate, a ballot similar in format to the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot for overseas voters.
If the names of candidates or parties are not printed on the ballot, why require petitions?
Nothing impairs the state from counting ballots and publishing the names of all candidates who received votes in an election just because the names are not printed?
Confusion over names? Why the confusion over names on petitions to prevent a person from receiving votes? Just take the “confusion” directly to the ballot where it is supposed to matter.
It would not be a stupendous undertaking for a state election authority to list online the names of all persons seeking to have their names counted for election to an office. Voters could inspect that list before voting begins and make their shopping list before writing the names on their ballots.
Ballot access fees are taxes and petitions are taxes by forced labor in lieu of cash. Both enforce ballot censorship.
How BAAAAD is New Age handwriting and letter printing ???
Perhaps numbers for declared candidates — for each office ???
eg
Governor of Utopia
1= DFR
2= Ogle
3= DR
ALL paper mail ballots —
Oregon survives
Peter, from what I have seen in the Baltimore Sun, it’s a socialist party.
@DFR,
Limit legislative districts to 1000 voters.
Hold a meeting to choose the representative for the district. Have nominating speeches, then vote. Keep voting until one candidate receives a majority of the potential vote (abstention is interpreted as opposition).
For other offices choose delegates to a county convention which would choose delegates to a state convention. Elections would occur at an appropriate level.
136,669,235 NOV 2016 PREZ VOTES
245,502,000 U.S. Census Bureau Voting Age Population (Current Population Survey for November 2016)
55.67% Percentage of Voting Age Population casting a vote for President
They’d be on the ballot if they had called it the Wine and Roses Party.