PRESS
RELEASE
from George Green Party
Georgia Green Party
http://www.georgiagreenparty.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
Plaintiffs Move Reconsideration of Federal
Court Dismissal of Ballot Access Litigation
Responding to last week's federal court order dismissing litigation
brought on behalf of the Georgia Green Party and the Constitution Party
of Georgia challenging the unconstitutional barriers to Georgia's
ballot faced by their candidates, Decatur attorney Mike Raffauf
yesterday filed a Motion for Reconsideration in Georgia's Northern
District Court.
"Georgia voters deserve to make their own choices in this year's
Presidential election," said Bruce Dixon, chairman of the Georgia Green
Party. "It's absurd that these laws are depriving them of that choice
and discrediting the electoral process."
Last weekend, the Green Party's fourth presidential nominating
convention, held in Baltimore Maryland, nominated Jill Stein of
Massachusetts and Cheri Honkala of Pennsylvania to run as its
Presidential ticket in 2012. The week before, the Stein campaign
announced that it had surmounted the threshold to qualify their effort
for federal primary season matching funds, a first for a Green Party
Presidential slate.
Georgia adopted its ballot access barriers (codified as 21-2-170
through 21-2-187), in 1943 to close off access to the General Election
ballot to black candidates who were already prohibited by Party rule
from participation in the then all-white primaries conducted by the
Georgia Democratic Party.
While often litigated, the courts have consistently turned back
challenges to the constitutionality of the Georgia regime, although it
is widely recognized as the most prohibitive barrier faced by emerging
party and independent candidates in the world. The courts have
invariably relied on a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court opinion rendered in a
Georgia case called Jenness v Fortson. But Raffauf's motion for
reconsideration distinguishes that case (which dealt with a
Congressional race) from the current one (which deals with the
Presidential race) and raises a number of cases on point which support
plaintiff's contention that the defendants can present no compelling
state interest sufficient to justify the infringement of voters' rights
created by the Georgia Election Code.
"As Dr. Stein so often puts it, the politics of fear have brought us
everything we are afraid of," said Denice Traina, Secretary of the
Georgia Green Party, referring to the escalating imperial wars of
occupation, the legalization and enhancement of the Bush
administration's surveillance state tactics aimed at U.S. citizens, the
bailouts of the financial institutions whose gambling with American
assets tanked the economy, record high deportations of our undocumented
immigrant neighbors, a new generation of poisonous nuclear reactors,
new off-shore and Alaskan oil exploitation in the midst of the BP
crimes in the Gulf of Mexico, support for the Keystone pipeline and
natural gas fracking and a range of other issues which make it
increasingly difficult to "distinguish the lesser evil from the more
effective evil".
Green activists continue to knock on doors supporting the ballot access
efforts of the Georgia Green Party's 2012 slate. The Party faces a
12:00 noon, August 6th deadline for filing their ballot access
petitions.
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For background, please see:
Ballot Access Litigation, 2012
http://www.georgiagreenparty.org/category/campaign-2012/ballot-access-litigation
Ballot Access News
http://www.ballot-access.org/