This seems natural
GREEN PARTY, ACLU COME TOGETHER TO SUE SC FOR PLATT
I think it’s safe to say that the Green Party and the American Civil Liberties Union collectively believe in about 99 percent of everything that is wrong with the world. Like defending NAMBLA in court or allowing Cynthia McKinney to do anything more advanced than breathe.
So I guess it only makes sense that these morons would combine their absurd obnoxiousness and piss everyone off at the same time. Unfortunately, they’re doing it in South Carolina.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued the South Carolina Election Commission on Thursday, charging the state has kept the Green Party from putting its candidate on November’s ballot.
The ACLU said it filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbia because the commission wouldn’t allow Eugene Platt on the ballot as a Green Party nominee for a Charleston-area state House seat after he lost his bid for the Democratic Party nomination in the June primary.
While the Democratic Party may want to use the state’s so-called “sore loser” law to keep Platt off the ballot, “that doesn’t trump the right of another party to run who they chose,” ACLU lawyer Laughlin McDonald said in an interview as the lawsuit was filed.
The lawsuit asks the court to keep the state from using the sore loser statute to disqualify candidates and to require that Platt’s name appear on the November ballot for the seat now held by Rep. Wallace Scarborough, R-Charleston. The sore loser statute prevents the loser of a primary election from appearing on a subsequent ballot as the nominee of a different political party. [JIM DAVENPORT - AP]
In their defense, the ACLU is able to get big names like James Lipton and Joan Allen to show up to their events. Not in their defense, hanging out with James Lipton and Joan Allen sounds only slightly less painful than sticking your hand in a lawnmower.
I guess I’m just jealous because I had a birthday once where I tried to get the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to show up but instead I got a drunk clown on a donkey. Sure, that was more than a year ago, but sometimes I have trouble letting things go.
The ACLU makes a lot of noise and basically changes nothing. They are interested in the oddest of things.
… and getting Platt on the ballot as a 3rd party candidate will accomplish what … ?
Short reason for the lawsuit: the SC Electoral Commission is interpreting state law to negate the nomination of a political party.
Long answer:
The point of the lawsuit is this:
SC state law allows electoral fusion, but the SC electoral commission prohibits fusion under under section 7-11-10 of SC state law if a candidate, seeks the nomination of and is nominated by one party then seeks the nomination of a second party, but loses the second nomination, the first nomination is invalidated and the candidate cannot appear on the November ballot under either party designation.
So why does the SC Electoral Commission interpret the law in this way? It it would prohibit the Republican primary winner, who subsequently tried and failed to get the Libertarian nomination, from appearing on the ballot as a Republican.
This is apparently a variation on the ’sore-loser’ principle, which presumes to keep spurned primary nominees from seeking to punish their inter-party rivals by splitting a party’s vote in the general election.
The different political parties represent more or less different ideologies; but still may have complementary interests. Electoral fusion permits a candidate to build a coalition of shared interest across part of the political spectrum. If the appeal to endorsement of a second party does not succeed, then the candidate still has a platform for political office. Except, apparently, in South Carolina, where the state electoral commission has interpreted section 7-11-10 to permit a party which rejects a coalition to negate the candidacy of another party.
Now if you are still with me after all that, then you might agree with me that the ACLU is taking up a case with broader implications for political choice in the state of SC than the initial post implied.