1. The one paragraph discussion of the Socialist Party on page 10 seems to me to be totally unsatisfactory. I want to take back the part of what I said in a previous thread to the effect that the distinction between recognized and unrecognized parties is a meaningful one. In my reading of it, the decision pays no attention to that distinction, instead relying on the fact that Moore’s paperwork on September 8 was incomplete.

2. The distinction is meaningful. Recognized parties have to fulfill one of two criteria:

   a) have 1000 registrants in the state and pay a $1000 fee
   b) attain 5% in a statewide race

   To maintain option (a) the party need only RUN a statewide race every four years, to maintain option (b) you have to repeat the 5% mark every four years.

   IF, IF, a recognized party has a National Party that has nominated candidates for President and Vice President, and the State affiliate FAILS to qualify in time, then the National Chairman has 72 hours to qualify the electors himself. This is so a national party doesn’t lose ballot access.

   Since the Socialist party is not organized in Louisiana enough to attain recognition, they do not get the 72 hour extension.

   Regardless, even if they had, the paperwork was incomplete anyway and would not make the ballot under any circumstances.

3. This claim about the Socialist Party having incomplete paperwork is a misnomer. It comes from the Secretary of State’s allegation that the address line wasn’t completed on the Notice of Candidacy form from the Socialist Party campaign’s 4th district elector. The SP’s 4th district elector filed his forms directly with the SOS, so the SP wasn’t able to review the forms before being filed. The Secretary of State initially claimed that it had not received the SP campaign’s 4th district elector form and continued this claim for three days until Thursday Sept. 11th when it suddenly “found” the SP campaign’s 4th district elector form, which it admitted was received on its newly-set deadline of Monday Sept. 8th. From there, the SOS asserted multiple times that it had the SP campaign’s completed 4th district elector form and implied that it was all-set on the 4th district elector filing. It was then not until the middle of the court hearing that the Secretary of State finally changed its tune and asserted for the first time that this form was “incomplete.”

   However, take a look at the LA Election code:
   “”§1257. Objections to certificates of nomination, nominating petitions, and notices of candidacy for those qualifying by payment of fee Certificates of nomination for presidential electors, nominating petitions filed in apparent conformity with the provisions of this Part, and notice of candidacy filed by slates of candidates who qualify by the payment of a qualifying fee, are deemed to be regular, unless an action objecting to their regularity is commenced as otherwise provided in this Title for contests of candidacy.”

   Not only does the Secretary of State pretty clearly lack the authority to disqualify a presidential elector’s filed Notice of Candidacy form unless contested through the statutory procedures, but the Secretary of State most surely did “deem it regular” multiple times throughout the full period that the SP campaign could have rectified it if determined to be incomplete.

   The judge’s ruling does not directly grant the 72 hour period under the statute to the Libertarian campaign because that statute specifically refers to the first Tuesday in September. Instead the judge extended the deadline to Sept. 8th ex-post-facto and states that it would be “discriminatory” to not also the LP campaign a 72 hour late filing along with it (i.e. allowing for the filing to be made up until September 11th). Recognizing in advance of this that it would also be (even more overtly) discriminatory (on Equal Protections grounds) to deny the SP campaign this 72 hour window for merely being the campaign of an unqualified party, the SP also had its National Chairperson, in accordance with that statute, sign and file a certification for all nine of our electors who had filed their Notices of Candidacy and Affidavit of Acceptance forms with the LA Secretary of State.

   Although the judge allowed for a 72 hour window for the Libertarians, despite that statute’s date-specificity, on the basis that not doing so would be “discriminatory,” the judge makes no reference in the opinion to its application to the SP campaign. The only basis he directly referenced in the opinion for denying the SP campaign’s request for an injunction is that its 4th district elector form was missing a completed address line, as the SOS has declared for the first time ever during the tiral. However, even if we ignore the Secretary of State’s lack of authority to disqualify a Notice of Candidacy form under the LA code (which the federal judge was clearly not familiar with) the LA Secretary of State bears direct responsibility for this paperwork being “incomplete” because it prevented the SP campaign from correcting this form in time – not only correcting it on the SOS’s own deadline of the 8th when it first received the form but denied having done so, but correcting it even by the 11th when the SOS finally “found” the form and, at that point, deemed it to be complete.

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