Cuccinelli Proposing Emergency Ballot Legislation
By Steven Osborne | Saturday, December 31st, 2011 | Catch-AllAttorney General Ken Cuccinelli is moving forward with proposing emergency legislation to open access to the Virginia ballot to the other Republican Presidential candidates in addition to Mitt Romney and Ron Paul as long as they qualify for federal matching funds and request a presence on the ballot.
Fox News also reports that sources tell them that Gov. McDonnell is also onboard with this legislation. Although some may be surprised at this, it should not be a shock. Virginia’s relevance is at stake and only having two candidates on the Republican primary ballot could seriously put that relevance in jeopardy. This legislation would allow Virginia a way out.
It is important to remember though that in order for the legislation to take effect in time for the March 6 primary it will require 80% approval by the General Assembly. So lobbying in both directions will likely be intense.
What a way to start out this General Assembly session! No one can say that Virginia politics is boring.
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Steven Osborne is a grassroots conservative activist from Central Virginia. He is currently furthering his education at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. In addition to writing for Bearing Drift he is also a columnist for the Christian Law Journal.
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25 Responses to "Cuccinelli Proposing Emergency Ballot Legislation"
This is ridiculous. If one of his state senate or AG opponents would have failed to get on the ballot I cannot imagine that he would have ranted about the process being “deficient.”
@Vern, of course it is. Despite the sainthood some are trying to pin on KC, he’s a politician through and through.
So now Cuccinelli, who is responsible for defending Virginia’s laws and state agencies, is trying to persuade the legislature to pass emergency legislation to change the rules for the primary? And he doesn’t think he has a conflict of interest in the Perry suit?!?
So we’re going to reward one candidate who claims he didn’t make the ballot because of felonious, criminal fraud by a petition gatherer, another whose suit claims he turned in “over 6,000″ valid signatures (when 10,000 were required), and others who didn’t even turn in petitions? Why?
If Gov. McDonnell supports this legislative travesty, as Fox News is reporting, let us pray there are at least 21 delegates and/or 9 senators who aren’t just political hacks and believe in principle.
Article I, Section 10, Clause 1, US Constitution:
“No State shall…pass any…ex post facto Law…”
Change the Virginia election law for the next cycle, but this go-around is a done deal. Shame on our leaders for shirking their Constitutional duties because of a PR problem. That is not exactly, “Profiles In Courage” material.
I’m with NotCathy: lets us hope there are a few legislators in the GA who will do what is right and not what is expedient.
Would ex post facto apply here? This legislation wouldn’t invalidate those who gathered enough sigs after the fact nor lower the signature # standards, it would provide another route to the ballot through other means and the actual primary hasn’t been held yet so it would not be a ex post facto event.
It is definitely a way for Cooch to poke at Bolling’s eye and apparently with McConnell’s blessing no less, if the reports are accurate.
Whit,
That is a very debatable question that can probably only be resolved by the judiciary. However, the questions to ask here are, what is known now about Virginia election law that was not known during the last GA session? What is “deficient” in Virginia election law now that was not deficient during the last GA session?
Emergency legislation for political expediency is the very worst kind of law-making. Cuccinelli just lost my vote and I voted for him for AG.
Way to go Cooch! Give the voters what they want — real choice, regardless of the outcome. Maybe I will vote for the Republican nominee after all.
Ex post facto prohibitions apply to laws with punitive sanctions, such as crimes where imprisonment is a possibility or a civil offenses with financial penalties. Nothing like that here.
Looks like Bill Bolling will oppose ballot reform, which pits him against the 75 percent of Republican voters who have been in the anyone but Mitt camp. How dumb is that?
LBF,
Do some reading. Ex post facto applies to both criminal code and to civil proceedings.
LBF,
Let me expand on that. Ex post facto laws are those that alter a status or relationship that existed under the law before the ex post facto law was passed. Punitive sanctions and financial penalties are not a required element.
I know that Bill Bolling, Brian Schoeneman and their machine compatriots will cry like a stuck pig, but miserably sobbing is not a change in status. There’s no change that takes away Romney’s status as a qualified nominee.
The whiny cry babies didn’t do their job and get people in place to get the required number of signatures, and now they are acting just like democrats. Whaa I didn’t do things the right way so now I’m gonna sue to get my way.
If I were Ken I’d tell them too bad, get the law changed in the next General Assembly and then come back.
Good on KC to stand up for VA voters not content on voting for Paul or the liberal Democrat from MA, Mitt Romney. KC has certainly earned my vote when he runs for Governor against Bill Bolling.
I thought being given something you had not earned was a plank in the Democrat Platform, not the Republican. Are you sure the Va. AG is not a closet Dem?
So, any candidate can now blow off a state’s requirements to show up on a primary ballot and a candidate will just sue their way on? Is that the precedent Virginia wants to set? What about the notion that we as a state, rather than being afraid of our political capital being cut at the knee, should recognize that this lawsuit only cements how important our state is to the national dialogue on the selection of the next presidential candidate, and that our state will not bend over backwards for individuals could not even bother to file for a position. When are we as a party going to look at some of our contenders and demand that they at least put forth the effort rather than hopping onto a bandwagon that someone else launched? The failure of the Perry and Gingrich campaigns to make it onto the primary ballot are regrettable, but the fundamental failure of the campaigns and not our state law. many other candidates have been able to meet this standard, including our AG. This is a gross farce and neither the AG or the Governor should be even entertaining the idea of changing rules that have, thus far, only winnowed out those who either don’t have the support, or the time, for Virginia.
If this doesn’t come to pass, I think the legislature will look at it more. Some of the candidates looked at the process and wrote Virginia off because of limited campaign resources. The end result is that Virginia stays irrelevant in the nominating process(remember 08- by the time it got to us- only Huckabee and McCain were still running- so same result no matter what). I guess some folks are ok with that. If we want relevance and the opportunity to pull nominating political power away from the Ethanol Hustlers in Iowa and Yanks up north, then this issue needs to be resolved now or later.
I can think of quite a large number of laws I would change that would change outcomes into such that I desire.
When it is time, will someone please make a public signal of some sort? Or, is this it?
Thank you.
@Josh Well said. @Whit, actually McCain, Huckabee and Paul were all still active come primary time 2008. Paul has much of the same organization around from that period and that had to help him get on the ballot this time around. If history repeats itself, possible by Super Tuesday 2012 that Romney and Paul, along with maybe one additional candidate, will still be seriously pursuing the nomination.
seems to me if VA wants to be more relevant in the presidential primary they should hold it in January instead of March. Frankly, I’ve never heard the MSM talk so much about VA during a presidential primary so if anything, the ballot fiasco has made VA more relevant, not less. does anyone think in 2016 the contenders won’t pay special attention to VA?
The special attention we need is McDonnell 2016. Anything else is bs
We might as well rescind the Loyalty oath so Gingrich can vote in the primary without supporting Ron Paul if Paul prevails in acquiring the nomination. More importantly, this spin of benefit to the voters is an insult to one’s intelligence. This is clearly motivated by status quo Republicans. If the requirement was too stringent, then no one would be on the primary ballot. In any case, any legislation passed on this matter should affect subsequent election cycles, not the current one. If this is instituted for this cycle, then the playing field is unleveled to provide a different standard for each of the candidates including those who did not seek inclusion on the ballot. Cuchinelli just lost my support. I want my money back.
The emergency bill won’t pass, so this is just political kabuki to shore up the Cooch’s base.
I think there are a lot of people missing the point.
The problem isn’t the people who didn’t get on the ballot. The problem is with the admission that Romney’s weren’t counted and the others were. There is a huge equal protection issue there, even before you consider the issue raised in the Gingrich suit, which I believe will ultimately encompass all of the candidates — which is that those signatures are under oath with felony criminal penalties attached to perjury, so they have to be presumed valid or you have thousands of felons. I think you have to presume they’re all valid or check them all, but you can’t do both. The risk is to Romney here — and potentially to whoever spiked Gingrich with fake petitions, and to whoever that person works for.
The AG is trying to protect the voter’s rights, and to keep Virginia and the party from being swamped in humiliation. I can’t help but wonder whether some of the people attacking the AG aren’t the same ones who think it’s unfair to have to show a photo ID when voting…who is wronged by having a broad ballot? No candidate has an expectation of keeping others out; it’s not a zero-sum game in that regard.
At the risk of stating the obvious: do you want to know what’s really interesting here?
A newly-informed electorate, or at least an ever-growing portion of it, uses the Internet to keep current, and relies completely on the Internet to find out what’s really going on. The political establishment, accustomed to its lackeys in the MSM keeping a lid on anything that might upset the natives, has still not adjusted to the new reality and continues to act as if it can do anything it wants without ballyhoo, let alone consequence.
We of the ‘Net find this very amusing, and revealing. The establishment believes it can change the outcome by changing the rules after the fact, and tell the citizenry some ridiculous and transparent lie about the act being somehow in the public interest.
You might see a letter or two of protest in the MSM, and that might make you think you got away with it. But if you look around the ‘Net, you’ll see that we see, clearly.
I love you guys, I swear I do. I have stated time and again: you are doing my recruiting for me. Please continue to be yourselves. I know you can’t help it, but it would be rude for me to fail to thank you occasionally.
I sincerely hope the AG goes through with his quest, and is assisted by the Governor. We are watching.
I agree with Russ, Catherine, Vern, Kimber, and Josh. If “The People” wanted to change a law we would have to jump through all the hoops, dot the I’s, and cross the T’s and then wait for our elected representatives, who are supposed to be working for us, to decide whether it was worthy of their attention and then decide to discuss it for a couple years and then we would wait for an election cycle to come around on the guitar. [Kind of like why we will never get term limits.] But when the representatives get a call from their “Corporate Elite” sponsors, who have given them lots of money as well as a lot of money to the candidates who are not on the ballot ……. oh my!!!!! What a tragedy!! The elected representatives of “The People” must act quickly to satisfy the “Corporate Elite” to whom rules are nothing but something to circumvent. Oh yeah, the “Oath” thing ….legally binding?? Not unless votes are tracked to a person, which seems as if it would be a violation of voting secrecy? I don’t know, I might be ok to promise to vote for Ron P. He’s pretty out there but if they could take half of his ideas half the way, why that might be ok. ;~}}
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