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Attorney Taubes: Guv “trying to keep people” off ballot.
Signing a petition to put a challenger’s name on an election ballot this year just got a whole lot more complicated.
It did so as a result of an executive order issued by Gov. Ned Lamont aimed at … making it easier.
Click here to read the order.
Lamont issued the order Monday in the wake of two lawsuits aimed at changing the rules for the way challengers can petition their ways onto primary and general ballots this year. The reason for the requested changes: Pandemic restrictions limit the ability to go door to door or fan out to large public events to sign people up in person. (Click here and here to read two previous articles about the lawsuits.)
The order creates a series of steps petitioners and petition-signers must take, including printing out petitions, photographing them, and submitting them, one petition at a time for each signer.
Rather than stave off legal action, the executive order prompted an attorney to file an amended version of one of the original complaints and seek a temporary restraining order.
The attorney, Alex Taubes, called the governor’s order “so inadequate and ridiculous that the only reasonable conclusion is that he is trying to keep people from the ballot.” He noted that rather than easing the process, Lamont’s order adds a new burden of handling “thousands of pages” of new paperwork.
The plaintiff in the other lawsuit — state Libertarian Party Chair Dan Reale — similarly dismissed Lamont’s order.
“This process is a farcical hellscape void of any substantive or procedural due process,” he stated. “Neither I or the Libertarian Party will be participating to lend it credence.”
Lamont’s Take
Lamont acknowledged the need for a change in the “whereas” section of his executive order.
“[T]he COVID-19 pandemic may make it more difficult for candidates to meet the existing statutory petitioning requirements because fewer people are going outside or to public places and some people may be less willing to have in-person interactions with candidates or their supporters,” that section of the order states.
And: “[R]educing the number of in-person interactions that might otherwise occur if no modifications were made to the existing petitioning statutes may help further reduce the potential transmission of COVID-19 during the ongoing public health emergency.”
Here’s the language the order uses to describe how petitioners may obtain signatures on petitions for both the primary and general election ballots:
“[A] petitioning signature shall be accepted as valid without attestation of the circulator or acknowledgment otherwise required if: (i) a registered voter signs a petition containing only his or her signature that is returned by U.S. mail to the candidate and later to the town clerk of the municipality or the Secretary of the State by the applicable deadline, or (ii) a registered voter signs a petition containing only his or her signature, which signature may be scanned or photographed electronically, and returned to the candidate by electronic mail and later to the town clerk of the municipality or the Secretary of the State by the applicable deadline along with a copy of the email demonstrating the electronic transmission of the petition by the registered voter.”
In other words, each voter who wants to sign a petition has to go out (or obtain) a petition on their own. So if a candidate needs, say, 2,000 signatures of registered voters, they will need 2,000 separate petitions. Then each of those voters must mail in those separate petitions to a government office. Or each voter must scan the petition sheet, which can be emailed to the candidate, who can email it to a government office.
Time & Numbers
Lamont’s order deals with two other concerns: State law gives petitioning candidates a mere 14 days to collect all the signatures to make a ballot. And it requires them to collect signatures of 5 percent of the registered voters in a district (a party’s registered voters in the case of a primary; all voters for a general election).
That’s already a difficult standard to meet in non-pandemic times. Challengers asked Lamont to slash 80 percent off the requirement this year and to give them extra weeks to collect the signatures.
Lamont’s orders extends the signature gathering process by .… two days. It cuts the required amount of signatures by 30 percent.
Lawsuits Proceeding
Alex Taubes, the attorney who prepared one of the lawsuits (involving thresholds for qualifying for primary ballots), was waiting to see Lamont’s order before filing the suit.
He saw the order when it was issued Monday. Which prompted him to amend his complaint — with a new plaintiff, Richard Lacourciere, who’s seeking the Democratic nomination to represent the 24th State House District — and seek an injunction against the new rules being implemented. His suit asks that petitioners be allowed to gather a smaller number of signatures through an online form over a greater period of time, from June 11 through July 15.
He’s also seeking clarification, he said Monday evening. For instance: whether signatures can be collected electronically, “or if the petitions need to be printed out and signed by hand.”
In his amended brief, Taubes expresses his incredulity at the order through the repeated use of italics.
“Lamont’s executive order fails to remedy the problem that it recognizes. In fact, it requires candidates to handle thousands of additional pages of paperwork in order to qualify for the ballot, more paper than candidates would have required if the old petitioning requirements were left in place,” Taubes writes.
“Defendant Lamont’s order introduces a cumbersome new mechanism for collecting in-person petition signatures that are still required to be signed by hand and will require hundreds of in-person interactions or a massive mailing using U.S. mail that would cost thousands of dollars and still risk meeting the deadline, which has been extended only two days.”
“This cumbersome new mechanism requires petitions to be mailed or dropped off at voters’ homes unless the candidate has the email address of a voter with a printer and a scanner or photographic device with email capability. Voters are then required to mail, scan and email, or leave the signed petition at their homes for candidates to pick up. Each voter must use their own piece of paper for their own petition, resulting in an explosion of paper forms not previously required to be individually printed for each voter. This procedure is more difficult than it was to go door-to-door to collect signatures before COVID-19. It is a mess.”
Lamont spokesman David Bednarz declined to respond to questions about the reasoning behind the order. “Questions regarding its implementation are being handled by the Secretary of the State,” he wrote in an email message.
“The secretary of the state does not create executive orders. We implement them,” noted Gabe Rosenberg, spokesman for the secretary of the state’s office.
The office’s elections division is at work interpreting the executive order, Rosenberg said Tuesday afternoon.
He said the state couldn’t extend the primary petition submission deadline by weeks because that wouldn’t leave enough time to verify petitions before a June 27 federally mandated deadline for printing military and overseas ballots. (General-election ballot petitions have been available since January.)