Rick Perry Makes Additional Arguments in Virginia Ballot Access Case

On January 5, Rick Perry filed an amended complaint in his Virginia ballot access case, Perry v Judd. This is the lawsuit in which Governor Perry hopes to win a court order, placing him on the Virginia Republican presidential primary ballot. The original complaint argued that Virginia’s law, banning out-of-state circulators, should be declared unconstitutional. The amended complaint retains that argument, but adds two more reasons why Perry should be put on the ballot.

The first new reason is that the statute literally does not require petitions to get on the ballot. The Virginia law, sec. 24.2-545B, says, “Any person seeking the nomination of the national political party for the office of President of the United States, or any group organized in this Commonwealth on behalf of, and with the consent of such person, may file with the State Board petitions signed by at least 10,000 qualified voters…”. Perry argues that the verb “may file” means that the petition is voluntary, not mandatory.

By contrast, the Virginia law concerning petitions for independent and minor parties says that petition “shall be filed.”

The other new argument Perry makes is that the Virginia Republican Party did not pre-clear the instructions for the 2012 petition with the U.S. Justice Department. Virginia is covered by section five of the Voting Rights Act, and under the U.S. Supreme Court decision Morse v Republican Party of Virginia, 517 U.S. 186 (1996), when political parties in states covered by section five change the rules for a candidate to be nominated, such party rules must also be pre-cleared. The Republican Party’s rules for the 2012 petition are somewhat different than the rules for that petition from 2008. It is somewhat ironic that the Governor of Texas is depending on the Voting Rights Act to help win his lawsuit, when Texas is also arguing simultaneously in the U.S. Supreme Court that Section Five of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in the Texas redistricting case on January 9, and Texas has defended the legislature’s redistricting plan partly on the theory that the Voting Rights Act, as applied in the redistricting case, violates the U.S. Constitution.


Comments

Rick Perry Makes Additional Arguments in Virginia Ballot Access Case — No Comments

  1. What MORON put *may* into the ballot access law ???

    ALL election stuff is SHALL or SHALL NOT type stuff — i.e. YES or NO type stuff.

    LEGAL Elector – YES or NO
    LEGAL vote – YES or NO
    etc.

    Will VA attack the VRA ???

    Stay tuned for more and more election law CHAOS in ALL regimes

    — UNTIL the SCOTUS folks bring down a whole series of Bush v. Gore 2000 type Democracy HAMMERS on the skulls of the MORONS in every regime.

    How about having a total separate —

    Supreme ELECTION LAW Court of the U.S.A. ??? — NONSTOP election law cases ONLY for it.

  2. The word shall in my opinion implies the use of force. At least with may, there may be more options. Could this help minor parties as well?

  3. #2, no, because the part of the election code that covers independent candidate petitions, and the petitions of nominees of unqualified parties, has “shall” in it.

  4. # 2 An election SHALL be held on the second Tuesday etc. of each even-numbered year.

    Is civilization DOOMED due to armies of New Age MORONS in the rotted Fed/State/loca regimes ???

  5. Pingback: Holy Irony Dept: Rick Perry Edition! | Election Law Blog

  6. Texas is not arguing that Section 5 of the VRA is unconstitutional.

    Texas is arguing that the San Antonio court treated the legislature-enacted plans as if Texas had not submitted a plan for pre-clearance at all.

    Had the maps passed by the legislature been determined to violate the VRA, then a remedial map would have been drawn. But the modifications would have been limited to any areas where there was a violation.

    Had Texas not passed any map at all, then a federal court would have been limited to making minimal changes necessary to comply with one man vote (as was done in 2001).

    Instead the San Antonio court decided that since the legislature plans have not yet been precleared, they decided they could not use them as a starting point – since to do so would have the effect of bypassing the preclearance process, and instead drew plans out of whole cloth, in effect acting as a mini-legislature.

    The concept behind Section 5 is that (certain) state and local governments would pass discriminatory laws, a court would later find them to be discriminatory, reverse the discriminatory law, and then the state or local government would pass a slightly different law. In any trial, the presumption would be that the local government had not discriminated, and the burden of proof would be on the federal government or other plaintiffs to prove discrimination.

    Under Section 5, (certain) state and local governments have to submit all changes in election procedures to either the USDOJ (or the DC District Court) before they can be put in effect. In addition, the burden is on the state or local government to prove that they are not discriminatory.

    It was also believed that Section 5 preclearance could be handled expeditiously.

    What has happened in this case is that the Section 5 proceedings have stalled, and the USDOJ was seeking to further delay the proceedings. In effect, Section 5 was being used in a way that would prevent Texas from redistricting.

    If the Supreme Court addresses Section 5, it will be in an oblique way, addressing concerns about the use of litigation to thwart the legislative process.

  7. Pingback: Va GOP chairman asks federal court to…

  8. This [the irony] sort of reminds me of something I ran into during the 2008 presidential election. I went to Project Vote Smart to see which of the presidential candidates (major and minor) had stated their position on various issues in the non-partisan group survey that they send out to candidates.

    GOP candidate John McCain refused to fill out the survey, granted many candidates do so as well. But what was just a touch ironic is that John McCain was one of the Republicans that the group had gotten to encourage Republicans to fill out these surveys…..

  9. VRA mess –
    Each State happens to be a sovereign NATION-State.
    1776 DOI,last para.
    1777 Art.Confed.
    1783 U.STATES.A. – Brit Peace Treaty
    1787 U.STATES.A. Const. – esp. Art. I,Sec. 10 and Art. VII
    — 9 soveeign nation-STATES ratified/created the 1787 Const.
    —-
    The enforcement stuff in the 13th, 14th, 15th, etc. amdts is the same as for the 1787 Const.

    IF an illegal ACT/OMISSION happens, then civil and/or criminal stuff happens in the courts.

    Resistance to the courts — then the military shows up.

    See the military enforcement of Fed court orders in Little Rock, AR in 1957 — school segregation cases.

    Some century the MORON Congress will learn how to REALLY enforce const. amdts. —

    DEATH penalties (or merely life in jail), UN-limited $$$ damages, etc. on MORON govt officers (legislative, executive and judicial) who violate const. amdts (i.e. const. RIGHTS).

    i.e. violate 15th Amdt, Sec. 1 and get KILLED or put in jail for LIFE, be made bankrupt, etc.

    Result — some of the MORON officials *may* wake up a small bit and pay some attention to const. RIGHTS.

  10. Pingback: Ballot Access News » Blog Archive » Rick Perry Makes Additional Arguments in Virginia Ballot Access Case | Vladimir Putin 2012

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