Where does “I believe in time travel,” fall in there?
While I realize I am arguing against the technical line of the law re: the date, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt due to the convention timing factor. I’m betting a TX judge will use that as his out too, even though they theoretically had control of their conventions. In the big picture, a worse wrong than a deadline missed would be committed by TX being left out of this election. (And I’m saying this as an Obama voter, and no fan of Texas…) To me, Barr (and co.) looks more foolish for the suggestion than the others do for screwing up the timing of their filing/conventions. He gets slightly less credibility than Nader IMO… not much.
Is this a general statement, or only because it was the Republicans and Democrats who didn’t follow the rules?
It’s bad enough that the U.S. system actively discourages people from voting for smaller parties without deciding the rules only apply to those smaller parties.
I agree that following the letter of the law would prevent the citizens of Texas from voting for either of the major party candidates.
I don’t see how you can call that disenfranchisement, unless the franchise is specifically tied to voting Democratic or Republican.
IMNSHO the issue is about the franchise and to need to allow for real third parties. It seems to me that in the past the major parties have used any idiotic, fine print, letter-of-the-law argument to keep third party candidates off the ballot. As I mentioned in the OP, 2000 even saw that same idiocy being used to control who state Republican party members could vote for in the primaries - there was a concerted, and nearly successful, effort to keep John McCain off the Republican primary ballot in NY.
Now we have evidence that the major parties, in a major state, haven’t been able to follow the rules. And the Court refuses to even hear arguments about the issue. This time.
I said it up thread: Some pigs are more equal than others. It may even be an accurate view of reality - but it is not the ideal that the Law is supposed to be seeking.
On preview: Peanut Gallery, check out post #7 in this thread. Barr’s petition was denied. No opinion given. Link to the order.
I don’t imagine they would, but maybe you’d like to address that to a textualist and not someone who believes fairness, intent, and common sense should be factors in applying the law.
Yet another reason to hate third party candidates. Obsessed with being a pain in the ass rather than actually running to win. Maybe Barr should crash the debate as well.
It’s not. There’s no constitutional requirement that Texas even bother holding a presidential election in the first place. The Legislature of Texas could in theory simply appoint a slate of electors on it’s own. AKAIK no state has actualy done that since before the Civil War.
Texas wouldn’t be removed from the election, though, right? They’d just be giving their EC votes to someone other than a republicrat. So the EC number required wouldn’t change.
What a wasted opportunity for something great. Texas could’ve been pissed off enough to secede and declare war on everyone. The only thing that could make that situation more awesome is a zombie uprising.
Wait thats actually what the problem is here. If any party other than the two parties did not follow the law to the specific letter they would not be on the ballot. It is a double standard and clearly wrong.
Actually, that would make things even worse for McCain. If nobody wins a majority of the electoral votes, the election goes to Congress, both branches of which are currently Democratic. So Obama would only need 236 electoral votes to win, because together with Texas’s third-party votes, that would be enough to send it to Congress.
Back on topic, I think that either the letter or spirit argument could be reasonable, but whatever it is, it needs to be applied consistently. If you’re going to let the donkey and the elephant get away with fudging the deadlines for the sake of enfranchising the citizens, then you need to let the Torycratic American Party of Curdled Cheese fudge the deadlines, too. And if you’re going to enforce the rules for anyone, then so sorry, no donkeys or elephants on this year’s ballots.
Nitpick: NC and IN have been showing very close margins for the majority of the year, especially lately. I’m not sure that he can really count on winning both of them, particularly because he has yet to open any campaign offices in IN.
It’s kind of moot, though, since as SenorBeef pointed out, Texas would still have votes in the Electoral College, they just wouldn’t necessarily go to Obama or McCain.
Right, but if neither party had votes from Texas, then assuming those 34 votes would be thrown away on someone else, the other candidates would take the lead on electoral votes at 253.
I admit I’m not sure if the law says “you must have more than 269 electoral votes” or “you must have the most electoral votes.” The media generally plays until 270 because that’s the sudden-death mode: once either candidate hits 270 the game is essentially over.
I wasn’t thinking of constitutional requirements. I was thinking of Reconstruction and Civil Rights era laws. I’m not sure about this, but I was thinking there might be a ‘names on the ballot’ trick that’s been tried before.
And yes, I think that if a significant number of Texan citizens want to vote for someone, and that person is kept off the ballot by the acts of the legislature or court, it counts as disenfranchisement of said people who want to vote for him. I’m not sure about legally.
I’m asking, more than stating, that there might be an issue there, in regards, not to constitutional issues directly, but to reactions to Jim Crow and later electoral laws.
Maybe we should look at it that way. Anyone know anything about that perspective?
The Presidential election requires a majority of electors. If nobody gets that, the House of Representatives chooses from the top three recipients of electoral votes via the process technically known as a “corrupt bargain”.
Leaving aside the issue of the legality of the Texas campaign filings:
I would note that the great complaint against the two major parties setting the rules for elections has no overall substantial affect on the way that the governments (federal or state) would operate if every tiny group was allowed complete access to the ballot. I do not think that the games played by the two big monopolies are right or just, but letting in the little guys woulkd simply not change the way that government or law-making occurs in the U.S. The U.S. does not use a parliamentary system. The fact that we have an independently elected executive (at both the federal and state levels) effectively renders the minor parties powerless, anyway.
In the parliamentary system, (overall, I am aware that different nations have different flavors), the executive is chosen by the dominant party, not by the population at large. Multiple parties can rise up because if they gain sufficient seats in the parliament, they can begin to demand that they are given power, even if they do not have a majority. When the party with the most seats in the assembly fails to get a majority, they are compelled to form a coalition with one or more of the minor parties, so that the minor parties always have a chance, by increasing their membership, to eventually gain access to (i.e. influence over) the selection of the executive.
In the U.S. system, the executive is chosen only by the electorate at large. Third parties are traditionally viewed as “spoiler” parties specifically because they can only succeed in keeping an opposing candidate out of office; they cannot elect that candidate on their own.
Would it be theoretically possible for a third party to shake up Congress by forcing a coalition to sets the rules and committe assignments? Yes it would be theoretically possible. However, the way that the power is balanced, such a party would be unlikely to survive for very long (my guess would be about two terms), before they lost their voter base as the voters switched to one of the major parties so as to actually have a voice.
Or until the voters abandoned one of the major parties in droves. I at one point (mistakenly) thought that the Reform Party had a good chance to force a realignment until it turned out to be a simple vehicle for Perot’s ego.
The problem I have with this thinking is that ISTR that the Socialist Senator from VT is getting hugely disproportionate responses in the Senate for his wishes, because the two major parties are so close.
If one looks at his committee memberships, he’s not exactly been marginalized in the Senate, and for a first term Senator he’s got an impressive committee membership list.
It’s also worth noting, IMNSHO, that both major parties in the US began as third parties.
Finally, the role of third parties at this time seems to more often than not to be single issue - and so if such a third party starts to show signifigant gains in the polls, one or the other major party will co-opt the issue. While I have a great deal of disdain for both major political parties in the US, this is a way for those sorts of third parties to “win.” They’re getting their issue dealt with, whether the credit redounds to their no co-opted third party, or to the major party.
The times when the political process does something right, I’m far less concerned with who gets the credit than that right thing gets done at all.