“Register and Vote” 6c stamps. The Markey campaign is set to save a bunch of these.
Thanks to Christopher for flagging this down: The SJC has made a rather uncomfortable “emergency” decision, in halving the number of signatures needed for some offices; extended deadlines; and required Sec. of Commonwealth Galvin to accept electronic signatures. That’s … a lot for a court ruling.
The justices shared Christopher’s discomfort at the potential of legislating from the bench, but the legislature’s inaction put them in a real bind: Either let something that is clearly unfair and unconstitutional go forward, or get out over their skis vis-a-vis separation of powers.
During those high court arguments, the justices appeared distressed to be addressing a problem that the Legislature has full authority to solve. More than one of the justices pressed the lawyers over whether the House might take up the matter in coming days.
But:
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo has been publicly silent on the issue.
Welp.
Also, we need to talk about how ridiculously bottle-necked the signature-gathering process is. You can’t just go online and grab a pdf of a candidate’s nomination papers, print it out, sign it and mail it in. From the Secretary of the Commonwealth:
Nomination papers are available from the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth in his Boston, Fall River, and Springfield offices, and may be picked up or requested by telephone or in writing. Nomination papers may also be available in certain city or town halls throughout the Commonwealth. Contact the Elections Division for a full list of locations where nomination papers are available.
So the Markey campaign (e.g.) has had to get the papers from the Sec. of State, and had volunteers mail them out to willing signatories with a self-addressed stamped envelope. Cumbersome, slow, and expensive. Are you kidding me? In the year 2020 you have to do this? A “full list of locations” isn’t even published on the website? I don’t know if this is on Galvin or the legislature, but this needs to be changed: Nomination papers should be freely available, not dispensed from on high “by request”.
This would seem to put the Markey campaign in the clear, which had been mailing out nomination papers to folks in an expensive and cumbersome process. (There may be a silver lining, if the extra work pays off in organizing power in the coming months.)
“The bottom line: as of today, the campaign has, in hand, requests for 20,896 additional nomination sheets. This pace would have seen our campaign accumulate more than 20,000 certified signatures by the original deadline…” John Walsh, Markey’s campaign manager says
— Kendall Karson (@kendallkarson) April 17, 2020
In any event, it’s a relief that our Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court came to the exact opposite conclusion of the US Supreme Court, and ruled that a public emergency does indeed affect questions of equality before the law and enfranchisement. We can avoid the barbaric spectacle in Wisconsin, of people risking their own and their neighbors’ lives to exercise their constitutional right to vote. But now we need universal vote-by-mail, as five other states already do.
One my union reps said the legislature will be meeting digitally to go over the budget adjustments for this fiscal year, why can’t they vote digitally and bring up issues like this? They can definitely do their jobs. Glad the court did theirs.
My concern would be that this kills transparency.
Kills transparency???? In the legislature??? There is transparency in the Legislature???? Wow, we just live on separate planets.
You’re quite the cynic, aren’t you? Legislation is done in public, who are welcome to sit in the galleries of the chambers or in the hearing rooms.
Am I a cynic or are you naive? I mean the only people who have the time (or more accurately are being paid) to sit in the galleries or hearing rooms are special interests lobbyist.
And let’s not forget, it was I the “cynic” that was concerned the legislature was going to screw this up and you were the one saying I was being to…cynical and the you were assured they were going to take care of it.
Seriously, my cynicism about the legislature is a whole lot more like reality than your naiveté.
I honestly told you what I knew to be true at the time. BTW, you obviously feel strongly about this. Did YOU contact your legislators to convey your support for waiving requirements?
I did call them to urge mail in voting and it was like talking to a wall (well, the aide said, we’ll no better by mid August–about the primary–which I of course pointed out would be to late if there is a problem).
And I have no doubt that you were told be people who also thought it was true…and that is the problem with the power that exists today…it lacks so much transparency that no one really knows what is login on. Many (like you in this case) are given information that frankly is unreliable, even if it comes from a group of legislators who should be in the know…but that’s not how power works in a closed system called the MA General Court.
Still no movement on Initiative petitions, which will require the standard number of signatures as far as we know at this point. The petition period starts soon.
For the future, I’d be happy if the legislature increased the thresholds but moved the entire process online.
I’m really not trying to troll or be obtuse, but I fail to see the equality issue since all candidates are impacted. I also don’t see the constitutional issue. Where does it say in either the federal or state constitutions that signature requirements are an undue burden?
It doesn’t. Which is why I hold as most
Liberals do to a living constitution. The constitutions did not anticipate a quarantine that shut down the state for the critical 3-4 month period to get signatures on the ballot.
It does against the equal rights of citizens who are vulnerable to this virus to participate in person and by encouraging an unrealistically high signature burden to be gathered during a crisis like this. It also was making it on campaigns having to spend time and money on sending pre-stamped envelopes to households opting in. Which could spread the virus compared to an online system. Granted, some do not have online access either. Either way, it’s hard to insist we should do things the way they’ve always been done when we have never faced a pandemic if this magnitude in living memory.
I think of my constitutional interpretation as living too, which is why being able to raise armies and navies of the US applies in spirit to the Air Force or freedom of speech and press applies in spirit to blogging on the internet, but at least there there is something to latch onto constitutionally. More controversially, I held that bans on same sex marriage violated equal protection long before it was cool even though that clause was written with racial rather than orientation differences in mind. OTOH while I am solidly prochoice on the merits I’ve never been completely convinced of the CONSTITUTIONAL underpinnings of Roe v. Wade. I am also a very loose constructionist which to me means anything not explicitly prohibited by the Constitution is fair game. This sounds like a case of relying on the “emanations and penumbras”.
To me, it is an example of doing something reasonable in the face of extraordinary circumstances.
OTOH …
When red-state Trumpist minions make virtually the same argument about these extraordinary circumstances as an argument for “postponing” the election in, say the last week in October, what is our posture?
I already took flak from one participant here because I viewed the forced cancellation of the Ohio Democratic Primary differently from the forced refusal to cancel the Wisconsin primaries.
Donald Trump and Trumpists do not want the general election to happen in November, because they know they’ll lose in a landslide. They’ll be making all sorts of arguments for why it should be cancelled — arguments that will surely be very similar to those jconway makes.
I’m troubled by the expediency of saying “yes” to one and “no” to the other.
I think it is very unwise to rely on an assumption that the pandemic will be over by November for something as fundamental to our national identity as the November election.
I think there’s good reason to listen to the conservatism of Christopher on these matters.
I, frankly, don’t know where I stand. I can tell you that my gut and heart tell me that we should go ahead with the November election whatever the risk. My head tells me that it’s very hard to reconcile that posture with this decision about signatures.
I don’t think it’s so much about equal protection but about the right to vote at all. The signature requirement has a potential to keep ALL candidates from the ballot. What happens then? Does that not violate the right to vote for our representatives every election cycle?
As far as I can tell the candidate petition is not in the MA constitution, and I am guessing that the signature requirement is tolerated because it’s a small enough hurdle to be benign, even if fundamentally unconstitutional.
If the legislature had not acted by the time the deadline passed I may have been a bit more comfortable with the court intervening. OTOH a ballot doesn’t have to include ANY names. Every once in a while you have a race where nobody qualifies so everyone ends up running a sticker or write-in campaign.
Seems better to put candidates on the ballot versus not.
Under normal conditions, the ballot-access rules are reasonably neutral and provide access to all—perhaps not as equally as we might like, but in ways that are known and generally accepted.
Under these conditions the rules that were just overturned strongly favor incumbents and well-funded challengers, and are an obstacle to others.
The rules were not drafted, much, as incumbent-protection laws. Yet that is what they would have been, deeply biased against challengers, double so for challenges without the financial resources to mount “we will send you a nomination form and a SSE” campaigns.
The logistics of sticker campaigns, especially during distancing, also favor the same groups.
I see (and feel) the point about legislating from the bench etc. and even the SJC seems not entirely pleased about that. I wonder why Christopher defends the unfairness with a shrug and apparently cannot see the problem with that.
Until we have public financing the candidate with money will always have some advantage, but the beauty of our system is that even incumbents have to go through the motions of securing ballot signatures and at least legally start from scratch like everyone else.
Yes they get to use the “volunteer” time that paid staffers always seem willing to donate, which challengers can not. And don’t forget the incumbents often have leftover funds they can use to buy signatures if they get in a real jam.
Stipulated that incumbency has its advantages, but while you can pay gatherers you can’t buy signatures.
Please…a distinction without a difference.
Sadly left unsaid is the inexcusable behavior of the Legislature regarding this enter issue. Doubly sad is no one seem to care? They flirted and sent signals that they were going to do something…apparently even reading the proposed language at the Dem State Committee. But in the end they failed in their responsibility and some campaigns had to get relief.
And the Legislature did not act on signatures for Ballot questions either and we’ll have to rely ion the SJC to do the job of the Legislature.
And Charley, are you serious? Universal voting??? Of course I’m in favor on it. You’re not seriously suggesting the legislature will do the right thing do you?
pogo – the legislature did not act, because this is about their power to protect incumbents after the emergency is over. The SJC decision is for the September primary only.