[EL] Qualifications to run for Senate

[Richard Winger]

The problem, though, is that states control the qualifications for candidates for presidential elector.  For example, the District of Columbia requires all candidates for presidential elector to have lived in the district for three years.  Some states require candidates for presidential elector to live in the particular US House district they seek to represent, even though they are elected statewide.  So Florida would presumably be able to exclude candidates for presidential elector who say they are pledged to vote for Marco Rubio.

The Michigan Libertarian Party and its presidential nominee, Gary Johnson, argued in federal court in 2012 that the state could not exclude the Libertarian presidential electors, because they were legally qualified and they had a right to tell the world that they were pledged to vote for Gary Johnson if they were elected.  But neither the US District Court, nor the Sixth Circuit, even engaged this argument in their decisions.  In fact, the Sixth Circuit relegated the entire case to just one short paragraph on the merits.  The US Supreme Court denied cert, even though the cert petition was supported by an amicus signed by a group of political scientists and historians.


 
Richard Winger
415-922-9779
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147


________________________________
 From: Jon Roland <jon.roland at constitution.org>
To: law-election <law-election at uci.edu>; "Conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu" <Conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu> 
Sent: Saturday, February 1, 2014 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: [EL] Qualifications to run for Senate
 


 
The statute is clearly unconstitutional, because the voters vote for electors for president, not the candidate they might to pledged to vote for. As such, the candidate for president, even though his name might appear on the ballot, is not actually the candidate, and his qualifications or lack thereof do not apply at that point in the process. They would apply only at the point the electors cast their ballots, and at the point the ballots are counted.

Now one could argue that the state may use any rule it wants for
    whose names appear on the official ballot. The constitutional
    violation would come if it did not permit write-ins or the counting
    of names not on the ballot. Ballot access could also be attacked as
    a violation of equal protection and an abuse of discretion.

In Texas this issue came up in the election of LBJ, who was a
    candidate for both senator and vice-president. Of course with his
    clout he was able to get on the ballot for both offices, but at the
    time the above argument was made against excluding him.

On 02/01/2014 03:27 PM, Scarberry, Mark wrote: 
According to this story, thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/197176-gop-insiders-buying-stock-in-rubio-2016, Florida law doesn't permit Marco Rubio to run for President and Senate simultaneously.


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