Independent Group challenges Joe
The Committee for a Unified
Independent Party has filed a challenge (copy attached below) to Joe's
petition to be put on the ballot as a candidate of the Connecticut for
Lieberman party. According to the Committee Joe's initial papers were defective
because he failed to identify himself on the
petition:
I want to bring to your immediate attention a significant omission in the submission of Senator Joseph Lieberman to legally qualify himself for the ballot as the U.S. Senate candidate of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party. I believe this constitutes a fatal flaw in Mr. Lieberman’s petition and necessitates the removal of his name from the November, 2006 ballot.
The failure occurred in his submission of the “Application for Nominating Petition” filed by the Connecticut for Lieberman Party with your office on July 10, 2006. Specifically, no identity was provided of the Applicant as required; i.e. the space where the name and address of the Applicant should appear was left vacant. Consequently, Mr. Lieberman’s disembodied submission does not meet the requirements of Sec. 9-453b of Connecticut Election Law which specifies that “the person requesting” nominating petition forms must supply a range of information. As the “Application for Nominating Petition” form makes plain, disclosure of the identity of the applicant is required information. Mr. Lieberman’s submission failed to provide it.
I haven't seen the petition, but I assume the allegation is true, since it's one of those things that you couldn't make up. Is there any chance Joe will be thrown off the ballot? I'm not an expert in election law. That being said, I think the better view is that a candidate should not be removed from the ballot on the basis of a technicality. On the other hand, this seems to be more than a mere technicality. I mean, the name of a person seeking to gain access to the ballot on behalf of a party (even if it only has one candidate) should be a matter of public record. Still, I give the proverbial snowball more chance than this challenge, though I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
The Committee claims that a non-Joe party that made the same mistake was told to identify the applicant before petitions could be issued. Reading between the lines, however, it looks like the mistake here might have been as much with the Secretary of State as with Joe. Had she rejected the application when made, the mistake could have been corrected.
The Committee gets to the heart of the real problem in another section of the letter:
There is mounting concern among independent voters in Connecticut that Mr. Lieberman’s so-called “independent candidacy” is a fraud on the voting public. He is not an independent, but is rather a Democrat who availed himself of an escape hatch in state Election Law allowing him to reinvent himself as an “independent-in-name-only” candidate after he lost his own party’s primary.
Actually, the problem is not that Joe is a Democrat. The problem is that he's a Republican, but we'll let that pass. The rest of that paragraph is spot on.
I want to bring to your immediate attention a significant omission in the submission of Senator Joseph Lieberman to legally qualify himself for the ballot as the U.S. Senate candidate of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party. I believe this constitutes a fatal flaw in Mr. Lieberman’s petition and necessitates the removal of his name from the November, 2006 ballot.
The failure occurred in his submission of the “Application for Nominating Petition” filed by the Connecticut for Lieberman Party with your office on July 10, 2006. Specifically, no identity was provided of the Applicant as required; i.e. the space where the name and address of the Applicant should appear was left vacant. Consequently, Mr. Lieberman’s disembodied submission does not meet the requirements of Sec. 9-453b of Connecticut Election Law which specifies that “the person requesting” nominating petition forms must supply a range of information. As the “Application for Nominating Petition” form makes plain, disclosure of the identity of the applicant is required information. Mr. Lieberman’s submission failed to provide it.
I haven't seen the petition, but I assume the allegation is true, since it's one of those things that you couldn't make up. Is there any chance Joe will be thrown off the ballot? I'm not an expert in election law. That being said, I think the better view is that a candidate should not be removed from the ballot on the basis of a technicality. On the other hand, this seems to be more than a mere technicality. I mean, the name of a person seeking to gain access to the ballot on behalf of a party (even if it only has one candidate) should be a matter of public record. Still, I give the proverbial snowball more chance than this challenge, though I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
The Committee claims that a non-Joe party that made the same mistake was told to identify the applicant before petitions could be issued. Reading between the lines, however, it looks like the mistake here might have been as much with the Secretary of State as with Joe. Had she rejected the application when made, the mistake could have been corrected.
The Committee gets to the heart of the real problem in another section of the letter:
There is mounting concern among independent voters in Connecticut that Mr. Lieberman’s so-called “independent candidacy” is a fraud on the voting public. He is not an independent, but is rather a Democrat who availed himself of an escape hatch in state Election Law allowing him to reinvent himself as an “independent-in-name-only” candidate after he lost his own party’s primary.
Actually, the problem is not that Joe is a Democrat. The problem is that he's a Republican, but we'll let that pass. The rest of that paragraph is spot on.
| File Name | File Size | File Link |
|---|---|---|
| CTSecretaryofState.pdf | 76 KB | Download |
Posted: Friday - September 08, 2006 at 12:00 AM
Quick Links
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Apr 17, 2007 07:18 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Apr 17, 2007 07:18 PM