Ummm ... is even one a competent attorney?
Picked up via Twitter. You may recall it's been discovered that Alabama's corrupt legislature gives free voter lists to the Democratic and the Republican parties, charging everyone else $29,000.
US Supreme Court Case Affirms eMerges Alabama Voter List Position
From Shawn Harmon.
eMerges.com just blogged a few days earlier about the special deal that the Republicans and Democrats had concocted in Alabama to make a profit off selling the state public record voter file.
The two major parties wrote a statute to get free copies of the state voter file for themselves while simultaneously continuing to charge minor parties an exorbitant fee of $29,000.
As a result of the eMerges press release, today we heard the following from the Director of Ballot-Access.org, Richard Winger:
"The Indiana case was Libertarian Party of Indiana v Marion County Board of Elections, 778 F Supp 1458 (s.d. 1991). The Libertarian Party was not on the ballot in Indiana in 1988 or 1990, but it was petitioning for 1992 and it wanted the list, and it won the case.
Also the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled in Libertarian Party of NH v Secretary of State, 965 A 2d 1078 (2008) that the state couldn't just give the list to the qualified parties. The LP was not a qualified party in NH except during the period November 1990-November 1996.
Also a US District Court in Michigan ruled in 2008 that the state had to give the list to groups other than just the Dem and Rep Parties. This technically wasn't the list of registered voters, but was the list of people who had voted in the presidential primaries, which were only provided to those two parties. Green Party of Michigan v Land, 541 F Supp 2d 912 (e.d.).
No court decision says the list has to be free. The court decisions say the states must treat the unqualified parties the same as the qualified parties. So if a state gives a free list to the Dems and Reps, then it must give a free list to an unqualified party that intends to petition..." (emphasis eMerges)
Mr. Winger: "...I guess people in Alabama don't know that the US Supreme Court already ruled in Socialist Workers Party v Rockefeller that if a government gives a free list of the registered voters to the qualified parties, it must also give it to unqualified parties that are trying to get on the ballot. It is so sad that so many people don't know what their rights are.
"A 3-judge US District Court ruled that way in 1970, 314 F Supp 984, and the US Supreme Court summarily affirmed the entire decision, 400 US 806 (1970)....."
www.eMerges.com has asked the state of Alabama elections office, as well as the Constitution and Libertarian parties for comment.