[EL] Akin and ballot costs

Tue Aug 21 13:16:07 PDT 2012

This far out, there are only printing or reprinting costs.  So if there
are no reprinting costs, there would be no "additional costs".  

My understanding of the Missouri statute (and I am so not a Missouri
practitioner) is that inside six weeks there is no replacement.
Presumably that is the timeline for advertising and a whole host of
other costs.  

Of note is that the Torricelli decision might have come down differently
today because of the time delay to create federally mandated accessible
ballots for the visually impaired.  

I have only had contested late withdrawals in Pennsylvania and never
where the candidate was refusing.  However, my recollection of the case
law on this point is that the right to run is an individual and not a
party right, so the parties would not have standing.  Because parties
are the vehicles, Pennsylvania is viewed as having a "hybrid" system.
As a result the party only has the right to replace in limited
instances, and only at certain dates. 

I am curious, what is the rule about a withdrawing candidate in a Top 2
system?  Can any California/Washington folks educate me/us?

Kevin Greenberg

Flaster/Greenberg PC <http://www.flastergreenberg.com/> 

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From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of
Jerald Lentini
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2012 4:05 PM
To: david.l.epstein at gmail.com
Cc: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Akin and ballot costs

A related thought: The statute says that the candidate may withdraw if
there are no additional costs or "if the candidate agrees to pay any
printing or reprinting costs."

Setting aside the question of why the candidate should have to pay
printing costs at all (reprinting costs make sense, but would it be
reasonable to saddle him with initial printing costs for materials not
yet produced at the time of the withdrawal?), would this language
preclude another organization or individual from covering the cost of a
reprinting, since it specifies that "the candidate" must agree to pay?
Would agreeing to cover the cost of reprinting have to be viewed as a
contribution to Akin?

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 3:42 PM, David Epstein
<david.l.epstein at gmail.com> wrote:

But he's running for senate, so don't we have to multiply that number
by Missouri's 9 congressional districts? Or perhaps we should start
with the fact that Missouri has a little over 4 million registered
voters. If the cost per voter of printing new ballots is on the order
of $0.75, then this cost would be prohibitive.

And that's what I'm trying to figure out -- Akin has said today that
he'll stay in the race, but even if he wants to change his mind would
these ballot costs be enough to keep him in anyway?

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 3:31 PM, Joseph Lorenzo Hall <joehall at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I'm sure someone could improve this rough back-of-the-envelope
> calculation I'm about to do with real numbers -- I used to be in
> astronomy where a factor of 10 is all that matters! -- but here's a
> likely upper bound:
>
> MO's 2nd Cong. Dist. has about 700k people in it, probably at most 3/4
> are registered voters and ballot costs for a single-page ballot are
> probably $0.75 (or more). So that's 700,000 * 0.75 * 0.75 = $390,000
> (to two significant digits). This is very sensitive to the cost per
> ballot of printing and the fraction of VAP/VEP.
>
> best, Joe
>
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 3:16 PM, David Epstein
> <david.l.epstein at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> So if Akin withdraws before 5 PM today, he pays nothing and the
Missouri GOP
>> central committee picks a replacement.
>>
>> If he drops out between 5:01 PM today and September 25, he needs a
court
>> order to do so, pays the costs of printing new ballots, and the
Missouri GOP
>> central committee again picks a replacement.
>>
>> Two questions: does anyone know (approximately) what the cost of
printing
>> new ballots would be? And what are the details of obtaining the
necessary
>> court order?
>>
>> David Epstein
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Law-election mailing list
>> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
>
>
> --
> Joseph Lorenzo Hall
> Postdoctoral Research Fellow
> Media, Culture and Communication
> New York University
> https://josephhall.org/
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