On April 20, a 3-judge panel of the North Carolina Appeals Court heard arguments in Libertarian Party of North Carolina v State Board of Elections, a case filed in 2005. The arguments lasted for one hour. The judges were John C. Martin (who asked no questions), Sanford L. Steeleman (who asked the attorney for the state whether it would help with ballot crowding to have just one party on the ballot), and Ann Marie Calabria. UPDATE: here is a newspaper story about the hearing; thanks to Independent Political Report for the link.
A decision will probably be out in three or four months. The case will probably depend on whether the judges feel that the North Carolina Constitution gives more protection to voting rights than the U.S. Constitution. The North Carolina Constitution says, “All elections shall be free”, and also “Every qualified voter in North Carolina who is 21 years of age, except as in this Constitution disqualified, shall be eligible for election to the people to office.” The U.S. Constitution does not have similar language.
North Carolina is one of only four states in which Ralph Nader has never appeared on the ballot. It was one of only four states in which Ron Paul’s name didn’t appear on the ballot in the 1988 election, when he was the Libertarian Party presidential nominee.
i been floating a proposed amendment that would add a right to seek public office…
I was there. The state’s attorney was trying hard to make it sound likely that any reduction in barriers would mean that eight parties would nominate full slates of candidates AND that the state had no responsiblity to do ANYTHING to reduce the chances of voter error. He also argued that this (and all?) laws were to be presumed constitutional… and so — what? If the law is presumed constitutional, cannot hear arguements to the contrary? I have been in the state legislature and heard (some) politicians say that it was not THEIR jobs to craft laws that were constitutional; no, that was the courts’ job. 🙁