Your analogy breaks down with (2), because the correct assumption is not “Assume that the person doesn’t really want to register their car, despite their declared intention to do so…”
Taylor absolutely wants to withdraw from the race, and have his name removed from the ballot. No question about it.
He wants to do so by not making an explicit statement.
So in your analogy, Bryant is the DMV clerk, Taylor is the person wishing the register a car, withdrawing from the race is registering the car, and paying by check is the goal equivalent to not making an explicit admission.
Now that the players are properly identified, we can see everything fall into place. You’re not sure what to do. The customer isn’t just anyone – it’s a celebrity with national media attention. Your boss might well say, “Sure, we can accept a check in this special case.”
So you take the check and go find your boss. Your boss might say, “Rules are rules – no checks.” So you call the customer up and say, “The car registration is being backed out of the system – you paid with a check, which we don’t accept.”
I know that Bryant and Kobach have both made the point that Taylor is a lawyer and county DA. But how relevant is that? Obviously, Taylor is going to know more about the law than a non-lawyer would. But do lawyers like Kobach and Bryant (I’m assuming they’re both lawyers) really think that every lawyer knows every law? How often would a DA have any use for a law regarding a candidate withdrawing his name from an election? It’s a pretty esoteric area of the law. It’s hardly something I think the average lawyer is going to be familiar with. But I could be wrong. You’re a lawyer. Do you know all of the laws, regulations, and procedures of your state?
Now I think it’s reasonable to assume Taylor read KSA 25-306b(b) before speaking to Bryant. But I still maintain that the text of the law could be interpreted several ways. I agree, since it’s been pointed out, that there was an existing interpretation on record. But that interpretation was not contained in law itself. It was found in a separate document. There’s no evidence Taylor read this other document or was aware of the interpretation that was found in it.
So Taylor read the law and found it wasn’t clear on how it should be followed. So he called the public official who was in charge of election law - Bryant - and asked him what the requirements were.
Bryant, inexplicably, chose to believe that Taylor knew the law - despite the evidence Bryant had which said Taylor did not. So Bryant chose not to tell Taylor what the requirements were. We can speculate on what Bryant’s motives were but it seems moot. His actions were wrong.
According to you, Taylor knew that a request without a declaration wouldn’t work. Just like a registration with a check wouldn’t work. So according to you, Taylor knew his request he was making to withdraw was invalid. And that means he wasn’t really attempting to withdraw.
If he was genuinely attempting to withdraw, he would have submitted a request that he believed was valid. Just as a person genuinely attempting to register a car would submit a payment they believed was valid.
Not true, Little Nemo. We can easily imagine someone saying, “I want to register the car, and I’ll use the credit card if they make me, but I hope they’ll take this check even though I know their usual policy is no checks.”
His intent is to register the car, genuinely. That intent isn’t vitiated by trying to “get away with” paying by check.
In the actual case, Taylor genuinely wanted to withdraw. But he also hoped he could accomplish withdrawal without explicitly announcing his incapacity.
Because you made a specific claim, and Terr is saying he can’t find support for that claim in the affidavit. You cannot say, “It’s in there somewhere, go look.” You made the specific claim; it’s for you to cite to it.
You don’t have to type it out. A perfectly appropriate answer might be, “Page 3, paragraph 4, lines 2-4 of the PDF of the Taylor affidavit.”
It’s true that I don’t know, or even come close to knowing, every law, regulation and procedure in my state.
But I think your willingness to speculate on Bryant’s motives is one-sided. You still maintain the law could be interpreted several ways…but you know, as everyone does reading this, that 20 people given a copy of this law and then asked to draft a letter for a candidate that wanted to withdraw would simply write the requisite explicit phrase in their letter.
Right?
So let’s speculate on Taylor’s motives.
Speculation: Taylor does not believe he is “incapable,” of serving as a U.S. Senator if elected. He is not withdrawing because of a newly-discovered incapacity to serve if elected. He is withdrawing because of pressure from the national party, pressure that comes from the national party’s confidence that he has no chance of being elected.
So Taylor doesn’t want to do the straightforward thing that he knows the statute requires. This is not an unschooled member of the public trying in good faith to comply with a confusing instruction. This is a guy who desperately wanted to avoid signing a letter that explicitly said he was incapable of serving if elected to an office he wanted to win.
Is any of that unfair speculation?
I am often criticized here for insisting that the relevant issues are legal ones.
This is a good example of why. In my opinion, the above speculation is both not provable and pretty clearly what happened. I certainly accept your right to say, “You can’t prove that.” I agree.
But I don’t accept a simultaneous desire to only admit about Taylor that which can be proved, and for Bryant and Kobach to freely speculate about their motives and knowledge.
If this were a criminal matter, by the way, that would certainly be appropriate: criminal law is construed strictly against the government. It’s very accurate to point out ambiguities and resolve all uncertainties in favor of the accused; in criminal law, the accused gets those breaks, and the government has the burden of showing unambiguous law on their side.
But this is not criminal law. This is law regulating withdrawal from candidacy. The people of Kansas, speaking through their elected representatives, have imposed a cost on a person who wishes to withdraw. They have required that someone who has sought office and been nominated hobble himself by declaring an incapacity to perform in the office before such withdrawal is effective.
That’s law that should be interpreted in a straightforward, reasonable way: you have to write a letter, and that letter has to explicitly say you’re incapable of serving if elected.
Well, now that you mention it, Bricker, I think your surmise about Taylor’s presumed motivations here is pretty weak, reverse-engineered from desired conclusion to supposed motivations.
A dedicated careerist looking to protect his future prospects, and therefore hoping to pull a slow one, and get away with withdrawing without admitting “incapacity”? Mind if we call you “Stretch”? Point of fact, the label “dedicated careerist” fits more easily on Kobach than on Taylor. If Taylor is such a careerist, why would he choose to be a Democrat in the reddest state evah?
And why would that even help him? His prospective opponent can simply make the same case you do and without any more foundation to it, he need only say so. Or even “My opponent took part in the most dastardly and subversive political plot since the horror of the Massachusetts Massacre!”.
As far as your speculations as to what any given twenty people might think, how many of those twenty people would think that a candidate cannot simply withdraw at will? The notion of “drafting” a candidate refers to reluctant candidates, or at least one who is feigning reluctance. The don’t actually draft unwilling candidates, and few of us imagine that a man can be press-ganged into candidacy. Even fewer would be willing to have someone be elected and serve who didn’t want to!
And your speculations about Bryant’s motives are also subject to question. (I suppose Taylor should be grateful that he got his answers by way of gesture, he might have had to suss out his answer from interpretive dance, Goddess save us all!). If Bryant had straightforwardly and flat out stated that Taylor needed to specify “incapacity”, Taylor might very well have amended his statement on the spot, had it witnessed and notarized. badda-boom, badda-bing, done. Bryant wasn’t assisting him, as was the duty of his office, but stalling him, to get him past the deadline.
Of course, it should be noted that my suggestion suffers from the same fact as yours, the one whereby Bryant was simply waiting to get the more authoritative answer. And yet instructed a subordinate to proceed with removing Taylor’s name from several relevant websites. You haven’t gotten around to explaining that away yet, which is disappointing because I admire your capacity for creative intellectual gymnastics.
All 20,since I specifically said that step one was each person reading the text of the law.
The question is not about forcing him to serve, but whether his name is kept or struck from the ballot.
The law says that if a person’s been nominated and accepted, he can’t withdraw his name from the ballot unless he declares his incapacity to serve if elected.
I agree my speculations are simply that. I am more comfortable pointing out the legal issues.
It seems that if they wanted to turn the pedantic meter up to 11, they should have done so for Miranda Rickel as well. She only states that it would be “nearly impossible” for her to serve, and that does not mean that she is “incapable”. And that is a precedent from only a few weeks ago.
Not to mention that she only states that she is unable to campaign. She makes no claim about incapacity to serve. Sorry, but her letter completely does not have any statement of incapacity to serve in it.
Her letter seems fine to me. She states she can do only a half-baked job and the issues require a candidate who can do them justice, all because her academic work load is so much more than she expected, etc. Anyone who sees this as weaselly is stretching, I think.
Why didn’t Taylor just say something like, “Because of unforeseen personal obligations, I am unable to fulfill the duties at this time”? Takes the “I’m not competent” card away from future opponents.
The problem with having an argument based on saying magic words is that is that either everyone or no one has to utter the magic words. She makes no claim of incapacity to serve, only difficulty in campaigning. She didn’t say “I am incapable of serving” she said “it will be nearly impossible to campaign”. She didn’t say the magic words, and apparently that wasn’t a problem two weeks ago. I wonder why.