| Subject: [EL] ramifications of Georgia ballot access law |
| From: Richard Winger |
| Date: 1/5/2011, 6:07 PM |
| To: "election-law@mailman.lls.edu" <election-law@mailman.lls.edu> |
Reply-to: "richardwinger@yahoo.com" |
| If it is constitutional for Georgia to have an election law, that, in practice, mandates that only Democrats and Republicans can get on the ballot for the important office of U.S. House of Representatives, then it is constitutional for all states to do that. I know there is a viewpoint that says that it doesn't matter, because anyone can run for office in the major party primaries. Professor Bruce Cain has said that. But that model is not consistent with freedom of association, nor is it consistent with world-wide viewpoints about how political parties function, or how they ought to function. Most of us are probably sympathetic to the efforts of the Republican Party to exclude David Duke from its presidential primaries, and the efforts of the Democratic Party to exclude Lyndon LaRouche from its presidential primaries. For the U.S. Supreme Court to ignore the ballot access problem in Georgia ought to be a topic of interest on this list. I am disappointed that no one has commented in the 6 hours since I brought the subject up. |