On December 5, U.S. District Court Magistrate John T. Johnston heard oral argument in Montana Green Party v Stapleton, 6:18cv-87. The chief issue in the case is the unequal distribution requirement for the party petition. The Green Party successfully gathered 5,000 valid signatures, which is required. But the law also requires that the petition contain the valid signatures of between 55 and 150 signatures in each of thirty-four state house districts. Montana is the only state that ever had a distribution requirement for any type of statewide petition, in which the number of signatures in a district varies. A typical distribution requirement requires the same number of signatures from each district.
The Green Party was initially told by the Secretary of State in 2018 that it had met the distribution requirement. But then persons opposed to having the Green Party on the ballot in 2018 sued the Secretary of State, arguing that the petition did not really have enough valid signatures in a few of the districts. The state court then removed the Green Party from the 2018 ballot, even though the state had already conducted a primary for it in June 2018. The party then brought this federal lawsuit against the distribution requirement, and also against the March petition deadline.
The hearing lasted 90 minutes and went well.
If a petition requires the same number of voters per district, shouldn’t election of representaatives require the same number of voters?
Who exactly are you suggesting is having their right to equal protection being violated?
Plaintiff’s Complaint text and any briefs text and argument text ???
distribution requirements seem suspect to me
Montana should redistrict so that the number of potential voters and petition signers is the same in each district.
https://ballotpedia.org/Moore_v._Ogilvie
1969 — AFTER 1968 Williams v Rhodes
@DR,
How does that apply to the facts in Montana?
The reason the number of signatures in various districts varies so much is that the formula requires signatures equal to 5% of the winner’s vote (from the last gubernatorial election). There is no connection with total vote.
There is a 2.5 to 1 variation in total votes cast.
57.2% of the vote was cast in 50% of the districts.
NEVER the same/EQUAL number of anything in gerrymander districts
– population, registered voters, actual voters, etc.
Ongoing / TOTAL failure to follow up on Gray v Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963) —
in all sorts of election law cases.
That’s a stretch to apply ‘Gray v Sanders’
ONE Voter-Elector in ANY sub-area = ONE sig on petitions in the ENTIRE area.
Very difficult equation for some folks – esp lawyers and judges — and tyrant hacks in govts esp.
@DR,
Didn’t Georgia have odd weighting and wasn’t the primary for a single office.