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Court: Minor political parties can't just swap out candidates on the ballot willy-nilly
By adamg on Mon, 06/18/2012 - 11:07am
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today Secretary of State Bill Galvin did nothing wrong in 2008 by refusing to print election ballots that listed the actual Libertarian presidential candidate for president that year.
Local Libertarian leader George Phillies had submitted enough signatures to get his own name on the ballot that year, but after he lost the nomination to Bob Barr at the national convention, he asked Galvin to swap in Barr's name on the November ballot.
The state's highest court said Barr didn't appear to lift a finger to meet a requirement that minor parties collect at least 10,000 signatures to appear on the ballot and the party basically has to either live with that or get enough votes in a state election to qualify for automatic ballot inclusion in the following presidential election:
[E]ven after receiving the national indorsement of the Libertarian Party, Barr and Root made no effort to qualify themselves for ballot access in Massachusetts. They merely expected the Secretary to extrapolate from the signatures gathered on behalf of the Phillies and Bennett ticket a generalized support for the "Libertarian" political designation, which could then be applied to them. But the election laws do not--and, under the Constitution, need not--extend such a privilege to minor parties where a statutory mechanism exists through which they can demonstrate the generalized support necessary to obtain that privilege: that is, by becoming a recognized political party. The [Libertarian Association of Massachusetts] has attained this status in the past and may do so again in the future. In the meantime, however, it and each of its candidates must adhere to the statutorily prescribed processes for gaining access to the ballot: they must go to the people of Massachusetts and request from them their support, as evidenced by their signatures on nomination papers. Whether another alternative, one designed specifically for minor parties or other political organizations that permits them to control--and to substitute--candidates bearing their political designation, would be a prudent policy choice is not for us to decide.
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Comments
Why are parties recognized anyway?
Why should political parties be recognized in any way by the government/election committees? People wonder why we have such an entrenched two party system that really satisfies nobody, yet we have a system that strongly encourages such a system. IMO, the government should not sponsor "primaries", since they are internal party affairs.
If the RNC wants to put their effort behind Romney, then as a private organization, they can ask their members to only vote for Romney. Same with the DNC and Obama. If the LP wanted Barr on the '08 ballot, they should have played by the rules and made him eligible for each state's ballots. But they didn't do that- Prof. Phillies should have remained on the ballot in Mass, since he qualified (and not Barr) based on the signatures he attained.
In the past
Candidates were filtered by "internal" processes in party backrooms or at the convention.
The primary election system was supposed to open that up to the regular voter...
There is no
legitimate reason to continue with this archane and foolish system that requires an individual voter to declare a party affiliation (even if it's temporary). Especially when that "temporary" affiliation becomes part of the public record for that election.
Further, requiring the voter to choose a ballot based on one party creates a potential issue where there are multiple races in the election. Say I want to support Candidate X, who's party A, for a local office, but want to support Candidate Y, who's party B, for a state (or national) office. Under the present system, I can't cast a ballot for both candidates of my choice, even if I'm "unenrolled". How does this encourage people to vote and insure fairness in the process?
The solution to this is actually very simple. First, put all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, on a single ballot with the simple instruction "Vote For One Only". Second, you declare ALL voters as "Unenrolled".
This gives all candidates an equal shot in the primaries, and gives all voters the maximum choices.
It's pointless to follow the
It's pointless to follow the rules of a corrupt political system. The system completely discourages new voices, and then people who choose not to vote are castigated for not doing their "civic duty". When the only choice is between a rapist and a murderer, I'm not going to vote.
John Galt was right.
Write-in in that case
If you find yourself unable to choose between two complete freakin' idiots (as I often do), why not write-in at that point.
At the precinct of my former residence, one of the poll workers was so nosy he always tried to peek at everyone's ballot as they were put through the scanners. one election day I wrote so many names in that when Mr. Snoops saw all the handwriting in ink on my ballot he almost crapped himself.
Sound more like
"very few people see things my way, so they're all doodyheads!"
Politics ain't beanball. Even minority parties in parliamentary systems need to ally themselves (moderate their positions) with other groups to have even a tiny effect on legislative agendas. Your Greens, LaRouches, or Paulites wouldn't be doing much better in those systems.
Build a platform, knock on doors, build a constituent coalition and get off your butt.
Change doesn't come from sitting behind a PC and bitching, or screaming at grandma because she doesn't see things your way. People might not like the current choices, but the lack of a third option isn't anyone's fault but the dreamers who won't leave wonderland for reality. Their positions and messages are micro-targeted to the right or left flanks of the current political parties. Thats an awfully small tent they're going after.
Hey, George Phillies!
Complete non-sequitor : George Phillies was my freshman physics professor. If you took the physics w/ calculus freshman course, all you got from him was F=ma and you had to derive everything else yourself.
Literally.
I did not pass that class.
George Phillies Got What He Deserved
Before I go off on this rant, I'll state that I've known George Phillies for years, worked with him on some campaigns, and consider him a nice guy in general. His work in his own field, with polymers, is irrefutably brilliant.
Having said that, I disagreed vehemently with him on one issue while I was officially involved (past State Chair, among other things) with the Libertarian Party in Massachusetts: major party status.
George has always been of the opinion that having major party status under the law makes it more difficult for the LP to achieve electoral success. One of his main arguments was that ballot access requirements were made more onerous via achieving such status. The problem, as he saw it, was that signatures we could collect were then limited to either unenrolled voters or voters enrolled specifically as Libertarian, whereas a non-major party can obtain signatures from all voters.
I was always of the opinion that doing anything to increase the stature of the party, in the eyes of the general public, would result in far greater opportunity than could be had by deliberately shooting for a tag of "minor" party.
I, and many others, worked damned hard to gain major party status. We finally accomplished that via Carla Howell's showing in her race for Auditor in 1998, wherein she reached the % threshold needed for the Secretary to certify us, making us eligible for our own primaries, etc., and we maintained it via a couple of other subsequent statewide election results.
[I feel I should point out that there has been considerable internal bad feeling concerning some of her, and affiliated, campaigning, fundraising techniques, and transparency, but that is really neither here nor there concerning this issue, at least for me. I mention it because it seems to me to be almost as much of a spearhead issue for Phillies, somewhat tied together, in his mind, with the major party thing, since her ties to the national party, and their stated goals, have usually been at odds with those of George Phillies. If that characterization is incorrect in any way, I'll gladly listen to correction.]
In any case, after I found that I couldn't stand seeing the party continually shooting itself in the foot any longer, and resigned, Phillies and his faction was "successful" in "regaining" non-major party status for the LP in Massachusetts. It was a deliberate effort, and they got what they wanted. And, in the case of the latest presidential election, they got what they deserved when Barr was not allowed onto the ballot.
The LP may have been somewhat relevant before (the 45% showing on the no-income-tax initiative petition ballot question, for instance, or Howell's own runs, where she gained the Herald's endorsement for Auditor) but as long as Phillies, and others who think like him, are in any sort of major position within the party, the organization will remain dead in the water and never be anything more than an inefficient intellectual curiosity. That's my opinion.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com