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Yekaterina Duntsova appears to be the only candidate who is trying to get on the ballot for President of Russia, other than Vladimir Putin. This article explains that she is about to start her drive to collect 300,000 signatures.
In Reynolds v Sims, 377 U.S. 533, at page 535, the U.S. Supreme Court said, “The right to vote freely for the candidate of one’s choice is the essence of a democratic society, and any restrictions on that right strike at the heart of representative government.”
In Wesberry v Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, at page 17, the Court said, “No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who makes the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.”
Justice Douglas wrote in Williams v Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, at page 39, “A state has precious little leeway in making it difficult or impossible for citizens to vote for whomever they please.”
The persons who wrote the 14th amendment, section three, never imagined that the section could dictate whom voters could or could not vote for. The restriction in Section 3 concerns who can hold an office, not whether anyone can be prevented from voting for any candidate he or she wishes.
On December 15, U.S. District Court Judge Gregory B. Williams issued a Temporary Restraing Order against the website NoLabels.com. That website is run by people hostile to No Labels. No Labels’ website is NoLabels.org. No Labels had once had control of the domain NoLabels.com but had abandoned it. Then, persons who oppose No Labels had purchased it and had put up a website that tried to denigrate No Labels.
The case is No Labels v NoLabels.com, U.S. District for Delaware, 1:23cv-01384. Thanks to Richard Grayson for this news. No Labels must post $250,000 bond and the case will continue, but in the meantime, NoLabels.com is no longer on the internet.
In recent years a new obstacle has risen to litigation over ballot access: the pernicious principle known as the “Purcell Principle” that says courts should not alter ballots too close to an election. In 2022, a U.S. District Court Judge in Florida refused to put the People’s Party candidate for Pasco County Commission on the ballot, partly because “plaintiffs cannot overcome Purcell”. The People’s Party had filed its ballot access lawsuit on June 3, for an election in November, and yet the judge felt the Purcell Principle meant the case had been filed too late.
In 2023, a New Haven Superior Court in Connecticut kept Shafiq Abdussabur, a candidate for Mayor of New Haven, off the Democratic primary ballot, even though he had enough signatures, because the evidence that he had enough signatures had not been presented until August 16, and the primary was on September 12. Abdussabur v Evans, NY-cv–23-6135336. The court ruling against Abdussabur was made on August 23, and the ballots had not yet been printed on that day, except for some absentee ballots.
Yet the Colorado Supreme Court has now decided to remove Donald Trump from the March 5, 2024 ballot, and has said nothing about the Purcell Principle. If the Purcell Principle applies to potential court decisions that put a candidate on the ballot, logically it should apply to court decisions that remove a candidate from a ballot.
If the U.S. Supreme Court reverses the Colorado State Court, that should set a powerful precedent that the Purcell Principle does not apply to adding or subtracting candidates from a ballot.
The origin of the Purcell Principle was a U.S. Supreme Court order in Purcell v Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1 (2006), in which the issue was whether the Ninth Circuit should have enjoined an Arizona law concerning photo ID on October 5, only a month before the November election.