{news} ACLU sues for ARKANSAS GP BALLOT ACCESS

[Green Party-CT]

ACLU sues for Green Party ballot access 
Wednesday, Jun 28, 2006 

By Aaron Sadler
Arkansas News Bureau 
LITTLE ROCK - Green Party candidates and other third-party office-seekers have unconstitutional obstacles to ballot access in Arkansas, attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court asks a federal judge to order the state to comply with a 1996 federal court decision stating the rules for ballot access for new political parties and for independent candidates should be the same.

Independent candidates for state office must obtain at least 10,000 signatures of registered voters to qualify for the Arkansas ballot. To be recognized as a political party, new parties must obtain signatures equal to 3 percent of the ballots cast in the last gubernatorial or presidential election - just over 24,000 signatures this year. 

The suit asks the court to declare the law unconstitutional and to order Secretary of State Charlie Daniels to recognize the Green Party.

The ACLU sued Daniels, in his official capacity, on behalf of the Green Party and its gubernatorial candidate, former state Rep. Jim Lendall of Mabelvale.

"I wanted to help the Green Party set up a party for the entire state so that each candidate doesn't have to go through the process to get signatures to get on the ballot," Lendall said. "It's an unnecessary impediment to ballot access."

ACLU representatives announced the decision to sue the state at a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Little Rock.

The Green Party submitted about 18,000 signatures to Daniels on May 30. The secretary of state rejected the petition to certify the party as a new party, saying it lacked the required 24,171 signatures.

"The remedy is to put this party and its candidate on the ballot immediately," said Rita Sklar, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas. "The point is equity."

U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr. first ruled in 1996 that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution would require a political party to collect the same number of signatures as an independent candidate. The case involved the Reform Party of Arkansas.

"The people have the right to hear from candidates with different political views, and the right to vote for the candidates that hold these views," Sklar said.

The ACLU asked that Howard hear arguments in this matter quickly, so that Lendall may gain a spot on the Nov. 7 gubernatorial ballot.

"The court first ruled on this issue back in 1996," ACLU lawyer Holly Dickson said. "In 10 years, the state Legislature has not amended the law to reflect that court's opinion that the requirement should be the same for a party candidate as well as an independent candidate. The lawsuit ... is as a result of the state's ignoring those directives from the court."

Howard's 1996 ruling stated that statutes regarding party recognition were unreasonably burdensome on new political parties. 

After the decision, the Legislature changed some election laws - including moving from January to May the deadline for filing a petition to form a new political party - to ease restrictions on political parties, but kept the signature requirements intact.

Attorney general's opinions in 1999 and again last year concluded that the changes met the requirements of Howard's ruling.

In 2001, Howard ruled again, in a suit filed by the ACLU on behalf of the Green Party, that the differing signature requirements for independents and third parties remained unconstitutional.

"I don't know how the court could be any more clear," Dickson said. "Your right to associate and share political views and establish a party means nothing if you can't get on the ballot and if you can't vote on those views and those issues."

If approved for the ballot, Lendall would face Republican Asa Hutchinson; Attorney General Mike Beebe, a Democrat; and independent Rod Bryan of Little Rock.

Bryan was certified for the ballot Monday. The secretary of state's office certified 10,052 of the 11,750 signatures the Little Rock record store owner submitted a month ago.

Bryan, 37, has been campaigning around the state on a bicycle.

Lendall, who served one House term in the late 1980s as a independent and three terms, beginning in 1999, as a Democrat, said he has been working for more than 30 years to improve ballot access for third-party candidates. He said he filed a series of lawsuits in the 1970s challenging the state's ballot-access laws.








       
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