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Barr Sues Over McCain's, Obama's Presence on Texas Ballot
corbettw writes "Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party's nominee for president, has filed a lawsuit in Texas demanding Senators John McCain and Barack Obama be removed from the ballot after they missed the official filing deadline."
For two months from now and get this all settled. Oh, what do you mean the election is before then?
I'm an Obama supporter living in Texas and I think this is actually a great thing to have both McCain and Obama's names removed from the ballot. Texas is a very conservative state, which makes my vote here virtually worthless. But if neither is on the ballot, then the chances of Obama winning the state because of write-ins or Barr (or another 3rd party candidate) winning because their name is on the ballot increases. Basically if John McCain doesn't win Texas, its a very deep blow for him and this lawsuit is pretty much the only shot we have at it.
When will we abolish this stupid electoral college?
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If his case is valid, you'll see some true bi-partisan cooperation in Austin as they speedily pass a repeal of the relevant section of the state code.
You know what we need? A federal law mandating that the top six political parties automatically get on the ballot for the Presidential election. The top six would be determined by the top six vote getters, nationally, as of the previous presidential election. This would ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again, but would significantly help third party candidates.
Nerds love seeing news about lawyers screwing up. So this should be classified under entertainment or comedy.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Or maybe something crazy like, oh... lets see... one set of laws that covers how federal elections should be run, maybe passed at a federal level. You know, like other civilised countries have.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
Hey, this is awesome! Screw electronic voting. Screw pre-printed ballots in general! Just think -- if candidates were forced to rely on a write-in only process, voting participation would drop like a stone because the average American couldn't be bothered. Only the activists would show up, and the polls wouldn't be tainted by idiots who know nothing other than the contents of TV ads.
John
They've also missed the deadline for running as write-ins. They should rightfully face the same penalties Barr would have to if he made the same mistakes.
No, it's not just to keep his name in the press. Ballot access is a huge issue for 3rd party candidates. He's trying to make a point.
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That would require an Amendment to the Constitution. For no good reason.
Few other countries (civilized or otherwise) are as big as to be a Union of states.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Personally I would prefer writing in "None of the Above"
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
There is no legal guidance on the steps taken by a state in choosing how to cast their electoral votes. They could toss a coin and it'd likely be legal depending on THAT STATE'S constitution.
Ensuring fair, reasonable, and standardized elections isn't a good reason? I think you'd be hard pressed to claim that the current electoral system is ideal. And the failures, as 2000 showed, are fairly catastrophic (i don't mean Bush's policies. I mean the turmoil, and lack of clarity)
There are lives at stake here!
"I think he's trying to get votes. Isn't that what you do when you're running for office?"
Not when you are running as a third party. It's *never* about winning when you are running as a third party.
I don't know about that. What motivation would the Democrats have to permit passage of the bill? Texas is a guaranteed red state which they have no expectation of winning, and without Texas, McCain essentially loses the election. Now, it's likely that McCain would still win even as a write-in candidate, but if the Dems are represented enough in the Texas legislature, I'd think that they'd try to block passage of the bill using any means at their disposal.
Just because someone is an activist doesn't mean they're intelligent or well informed.
It just means they have strong opinions, and I have plenty of those about things I haven't even heard of yet.
Indeed: the real problem is that the states are letting the people choose the electors, when it ought to be the state legislature doing it!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What possible legal grounds could a political party - a private organization - have for forcing a state to do anything? Political parties have no constitutional standing; they're just clubs. Clubs of people who have very effectively fooled you, at least, into thinking that somehow the country would fall apart if they weren't around to tell you how to think.
States can do whatever they like to choose their electors, and put whatever constraints they feel like on the process, SO LONG AS those constraints are clear and unprejudicial. If every private club that wants their candidate on the ballot has to meet the same vaguely reasonable criteria, you don't have a damned thing to say about it unless you live in that state.
At least, that's how it is now. I'll bet just about anything that if Barr did somehow prevail here, the ultimate result would actually be another small death for states' rights, one way or another.
cogito ergo dubito
Agreed! Most people are completely confused about our government, and believe that it is a democracy. It would actually be quite difficult to have a true democracy with this many people in our country.
I'm also with you when it comes to our federal government (even state and local govt) coming in and telling us what to do. This is suppose to be a "government of the people and for the people" but it has turned into a goverment of the politicians and lobbyists for the politician, lobbyists and those who pay the lobbyists.
As someone one said, "I love my country, but I fear the government."
Contrariwise, if major party candidates can't find the time or motivation to follow election laws, why do they deserve your vote?
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Hm, holding people accountable for rules without considering who they are or how powerful they are. Man, what an asshole.
You bring up an interesting analogy, but with a problem: if you miss the tax filing deadline, you are subject to penalties. Those are the rules, and it's well known.
I don't know the specifics of the election rules, but I suspect the stipulation is that if you miss the filing deadline, you won't get on the ballot. And not that if you miss the filing deadline, you'll get a fine.
Is that reasonable? Is that even true? I don't know. But seriously, bending rules out of convenience or _perceived_necessity? you're kidding, right?
Maybe he doesn't deserve your vote. You might not even agree with his Libertarian Party platform. But it's not about him; it's about the Big Party guys.
Does whether or not this Barr guy (I know nothing about him) would be a good president affect whether or not the two powerful parties in the US should be held accountable? I think that's the point.
And seriously, third parties have it kind of bad here. They have trouble getting on the ballot in all states, and I'm not surprised that they'd pull out all the stops to improve their situation.
Personally, I don't like it this two-party dominance a whole lot. Their collective monopoly of power is a little scary.
Well we (Americans) lost our own Civil War. The repercussions have rung through the last century plus. The federal government was not meant to be a massive overriding force in our lives. States were supposed to govern their own borders and the Constitution was there to limit a few things that states could not govern (like trade between states, or basic rights).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Thank you! It saddens me that 90% of the population have such a poor understanding of their own system of government. Do high schools no longer require a class in Government? Do people just not care what the reality is and just make up facts that suit them? It's insane that people think it is important to vote but not important to understand what the fuck is going on.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I fail to see really how the failures of 2000 were "catastrophic" in any sense of the word. Nobody died, the government didn't shut down, and there was a peaceful succession of power.
That's why you had a civil war. People in the southern states were keeping slaves. Now if you'd like to make some big spiel about how the Union winning the civil war lead to negative repercussions for your state's rights, then I'm simply going to point out that the previous system was far, far worse. It allowed slavery. Yes it did. So arguing for states rights to be reinstated in order to protect people's rights is not really a solid argument.
May the Maths Be with you!
Both the EU and the US are examples that this can actually be done.
Except that the EU is much closer to the original vision of the US than the modern US is. As the GP says, there to limit a few things that states could not govern (like trade between states, or basic rights). The modern US is in nearly all significant ways a unitary country with provinces, rather than a union of sovereign states as originally intended.
Of course, this is mostly because the EU is ~40 years old. Give it a century or so, and we'll probably see it go the same way.
Well we (Americans) lost our own Civil War.
Can a civil war end in any other way?
If you don't like that, amend the constitution or move.
STFU. Since *I* don't like it, I'll keep right on making noise about it until it is changed. I cannot amend the constitution alone and I damn sure am not going to move because some asshole has the kneejerk reaction of a child.
"Or move." What a crock of shit that tired line is.
"Indeed: the real problem is that the states are letting the people choose the electors, when it ought to be the state legislature doing it!"
Have you looked at your state legislature lately? Do you know who your state legislators are? Do you even know what your state legislature as called, as well as the names of its houses?
I'm in favor of what you propose, as well as what another respondent said about repealing the Seventeenth, but that would require that voters not only trust their state legislatures (which they don't, not that they've been given much reason to), but that they know their legislatures.
Reform the legislatures into more trustworthy bodies (say, by eliminating gerrymandering, or by implementing ranked voting, or both), then you can start looking at how they apply to the federal government.
That's ridiculous.
Both systems allowed for slavery. It doesn't take a change in the type of government to prohibit slavery. It just takes the willingness of those in power to prohibit it.
Slavery ended with the passing of the 13th amendment after the war. Until then, it was still legal in the North wherever individual states or territories didn't prohibit it. Thanks to our lousy government run education, everyone thinks Lincoln abolished slavery with his "Emancipation Proclamation". Read it. It allowed slavery in the north.
It's amazing how our government has managed to whitewash history to make it look like hundreds of thousands of chivalrous northern soldiers fought and died to free the black man. Yet if you look at the way blacks were treated in the north before and after the war, you'd quickly realize that these northerners were hardly willing to die for the rights of blacks. But the whole "free the slaves" cover is great for whipping up patriotism while covering the real reason for the war - a federal power grab by wealthy interests.
Face it. If the northerners really believed in equality and rights strongly enough to fight for them, we wouldn't have had another century of segregation in both the north and the south followed by race riots all over the north in the 60's.
Not at a state level, only on an individual level (this was one of the original mandates of the federal government, specifically to prevent trade embargoes between states). You'd easily end up with individuals willing to trade in slave-produced goods from the south, and with less competition in the market (and higher demand for those products as a result of other people being unwilling to trade in it), such individuals would profit substantially.
Even if no such individuals already existed in those states (presuming all citizens of the northern states were of like mind), southerners would have readily traveled north and taken on the role.
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MA is also a commonwealth. (That word sounds like socialism...)
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Federal elections are about choosing between Democrats or Republicans. So long as these two can get ready in time, it's all that matters. Let's keep in mind that we have a legal system here that is based on common law. US law is about reality, not books and schools.
The bottom line is that Libertarians are just not part of the democratic process in the United States. He should just shut up and choose to be Democrat or Republican.
Please stop propping up the two-party system. Thank you.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
That's why you had a civil war. People in the southern states were keeping slaves.
Wrong. Take a look at the Emancipation Proclamation sometime, and you'll see that it was much more of an economic attack than a declaration of the right of men and women to be free of slavery. From Wikipedia:
If the Union had been so interested in declaring all men and women to be free, why did it only apply to states that didn't toe the line? I'm fairly sure it wasn't until after the American Civil War that slavery was completely abolished by federal/Constitutional law, which means (from a federal standpoint, at least) Union states were still allowed to have slavery throughout the war. It's completely revisionist to claim the war was "about" freeing slaves (though I admit that's what you'll typically be taught in school as a child here in the US).
Yeah, the commerce clause has done some terrible things, but it's done some good too. We wouldn't have our interstate highway system without it.
The real offender is the 16th amendment. It basically let's the federal government say to the states, "Do what we say, or we won't give you your money back."
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Weren't the northern states, in the old system, capable of declining trade with slave-enabling states?
No. Regulation of interstate commerce is a federal, not a state prerogative. Under the Constitution, states are not allowed to impose embargoes, tariffs, or other trade restrictions on their neighbors. Individuals in the north could have chosen not to trade with the south, but that wouldn't work.
However, slavery wasn't really the reason the southern states seceded, any more than taxes were the reason for the Revolution. In both cases, the reasons were complex and deep, and had as much to do with people feeling like they didn't really belong as any specific concerns. As another poster pointed out, several northern states allowed slavery throughout the Civil War, and that wasn't changed until well after the war was over.
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Have you looked at your state legislature lately?
I have tried and it's very difficult. The media pays no attention to the state legislature. It's like they don't even exist. Therefore, everyone turns to the federal government to solve their problems.
Not enough cops on your street? Washington needs to pass that crime bill!
The schools suck in my area. We need No Child Left Behind!
These are local problems. The need to be solved by state and local government!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
And today we get yet another lesson on why the electoral college is useless and outdated. How is it that someone can get a majority of votes and not win? Everyone's vote should be equal; having some people's vote count more than other people's vote is absurd.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I would argue that it is completely revisionist to claim that the war was not about freeing the slaves. I suspect that this revisionism has its roots in modern Southern politicians and historians who are embarrassed by The Peculiar Institution and want to claim some other more noble sounding reason for starting the War of the Southern Rebellion. One has only to look at the reaction in the North to John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry to see that a major confrontation was brewing over the issue although Lincoln, ever the politician, later tried to spin the cause of the war as "we were just trying to restrict it's growth." The usual reason given for why the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the border states that allowed slavery was that Lincoln could not afford to alienate them too much since they might also choose to secede.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, Saturday, March 4, 1865
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I don't think you quite understand the point of the electoral college. It wasn't to make some people's votes be worth more than others; the founders had a more state-centered view of the matter, as back then being a state meant a lot more than it does now.
Rather than remove the electoral college to keep in line with modern encroachments on the constitution, why not go back to the state-centered approach instead of the large-central-government one? It would mean that the feds couldn't try to override local marijuana laws and stick sick people in jail, for one thing.
And today we get yet another lesson on why the electoral college is useless and outdated. How is it that someone can get a majority of votes and not win? Everyone's vote should be equal; having some people's vote count more than other people's vote is absurd.
Insightful my ass.
Try reading the constitution. You know, the founding document of our nation? The supreme law of the land?
People don't vote for president. States do. It's the law. Get over it.
Complete disregard for constitutional law is exactly why we're having so many problems today. (Lack of education is another one.)
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People don't vote for president. States do. It's the law. Get over it.
Or you could change the law if it's become anachronistic (I'm not saying it has, but saying "It's the law. Get over it" is rather silly... if one were to take that view, women and minorities wouldn't have the right to vote in the US).
Complete disregard for constitutional law is exactly why we're having so many problems today
Funny, many other countries don't have a US-style constitution, and yet they don't have the problems the US does. Mayhap you're looking in the wrong place for an excuse?
I change what I can, where I can. I have a much better shot at changing the status quo by trying to change people's minds, one person at a time, than I do by pleading with those in power to change the system so that they have less power.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard