The Verde News reports on the efforts of Arizona’s Secretary of State to remove the Green Party from the state’s ballots in 2010, and provides details on the party’s efforts to challenge provisions of the state’s laws.
Secretary of State Ken Bennett has moved to strip the Green Party of its political status in Arizona. Bennett said the latest voter registration figures show the party did not have enough members to qualify under state law for its own place on the ballot . . . Bennett, however, may not get the last word: The party has filed suit in federal court, challenging provisions in state law that allow only Arizona residents to register others to vote . . . The Attorney General’s Office, in a formal response, denied that the laws are unconstitutional. But the Green Party may have the law on its side.
Last year the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voided a similar Arizona statute which said that only Arizona residents can circulate petitions to put a party’s presidential nominee on the ballot. That decision ultimately was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.And the issues are, in many ways, the same.
Amy Bjelland, the state election director, said there is another way the Green Party could get back on the ballot: It could submit petitions with the signatures of 20,449 registered voters — a figure based on turnout in the 2006 gubernatorial race — by Feb. 25.
But the Green Party has a problem with that law, too, saying in its lawsuit that the February deadline unfairly works against the interests of minor political parties.
Here, too, there is some precedent for the party’s arguments: That same 9th Circuit ruling on who can circulate petitions also voided a deadline for independent candidates to submit the paperwork to put their names on the ballot for the presidential election. The judges agreed with attorneys for the party that the deadline, which came months before either major party knew who its nominees would be, is unfair.
This latest challenge, like the earlier one, is likely to be appealed by whoever loses, with the U.S. Supreme Court once again asked to review.
The newspapers in Arizona have never got this story really right. The Green Party was never intending to qualify by registration, so the so-called “news” that the party was being removed from the ballot for lack of registrations wasn’t really news, if the newspapers just understood that the Greens are using the petition alternative instead. It’s a case of the Secretary of State putting out a misleading press release, and the newspapers just printing the substance without understanding the real story.
It’s worth noting that Secretary of State Bennett is a Republican. If the Greens are knocked off the balllot, it will be more likely that the Democrats can take back Arizona. So Bennett would seem to be acting against his political interests.
Easy to miss. The story is only quoted by a link in the Ballot Access News piece, and it is a different link than the one you quoted – just the same story printed in different papers.
Heh. Dunno how I missed that, I even checked back to see if it hadn’t been covered already!
This is the same story that was reported and corrected here:
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/12/arizona-green-party-ballot-access-lawsuit-gets-publicity-some-incorrect/
It was just published in more than one newspaper.