On November 19, Faye Coffield filed her rebuttal brief in the 11th circuit in Coffield v Handel, 09-13277. She is challenging the petition required for independent and minor party candidates for the U.S. House in Georgia. That procedure, obtaining 5% of the number of registered voters on a petition, is so difficult that it has not been used since 1964, when an independent candidate did the petition. Back in 1964, the petition was due in October and the signatures weren’t checked, and county boundaries matched U.S. House district boundaries.
The state’s brief, filed earlier this month, is not available in electronic format. However, it simply argues that the 5% petition has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1971, in Jenness v Fortson. However, as Coffield’s briefs point out, the plaintiffs in Jenness v Fortson did not introduce any evidence about the difficulty of complying with the law. They merely argued as a matter of logic and law that since Republicans and Democrats can run in primaries without any petition, that equal protection forbids Georgia from requiring any signatures from any candidates.
Separate is NOT equal.
Brown v. Bd of Ed 1954
Each election is NEW and has ZERO to do with any prior election.
Too much for MORON lawyers and judges to detect in their MORON brains in ballot access cases.
Well, surely if Demo Rep can repeat the same slogan again and again…election law reform will magical come about.
The reality, with all due respect, is that unless their is a serious broad based interest group backing ballot access law reforms, little is going to change in court in laws or public opinion.
Courts do make significant changes sometimes, even in the absense of a big interest group being involved. In 2008 the court in 3 circuits struck down laws that ban out-of-state circulators, for example.
In Brown v. Bd of Ed the genius Supremes finally observed that the Civil War had happened and that 14th Amdt, Sec. 1 had something to do with getting EQUAL civil rights for ALL American citizens — and even overruled lots of their EVIL racist stuff going back to the late 1800s — i.e. Plessy v. Ferguson.
Folks fail to realize how STUPID lawyers are in repeating the same old MORON arguments and somehow expecting different results. — thus the 41 years of UNEQUAL ballot access law cases since Williams v. Rhodes in 1968.
Brown NOT brought up in Williams — due to MORON lawyers and the worse MORON Supremes — even though some of the 1968 Supremes were around for the 1954 Brown case.
There have been about 7 MAJOR screwed up ballot access cases since Williams – ALL of them NOT bringing up Brown.