The Independent View: Judge Lowers Bar for GA Third Party Candidates

The Chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association said Friday that a Federal judge’s decision to strike down Georgia’s ballot access law as unconstitutionally restrictive could have national ramifications for the 2016 Presidential race.

U.S. District Judge Richard Story’s March 17 order in the four-year-old case brought by Georgia’s Green Party and Constitution Party would significantly lower the qualifying threshold for third-party candidates seeking a place on this year’s Presidential ballot.

Randy Evans, a Dentons partner in Atlanta who is also a member of the Republican National Committee’s rules committee, called Story’s order “particularly noteworthy” given that it “comes at a time when institutional power brokers are meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss the creation of another party should Donald Trump become the GOP nominee.”

The 80-page order, handed down Mar. 17th, permanently bars Georgia’s Secretary of State from making political organizations that want to place candidates on the statewide Presidential ballot first collect signatures from 1 percent, or more than 50,000, of the state’s registered voters. Instead, Story set the bar for the 2016 Presidential race at just 7,500 signatures.

The judge wrote that the 7,500-signature requirement is an interim measure that will expire when the Georgia General Assembly enacts a permanent, and Constitutional, provision.

Story said that because this is an election year, he felt "compelled to assure that a procedure is in place to protect the very rights that this order seeks to secure: specifically the rights of Georgia voters to fully participate in presidential elections by having a meaningful opportunity to vote for candidates other than those nominated by the two major political parties."

In his order, Story emphasized "the important position third parties and independent candidates have occupied in this country's political history."

Georgia's election code, he said, "prevents Georgia voters from being able to effectively exercise their political choice in favor of third party or independent candidates."