Attorney sues over signatures needed to make ballot

The Columbus attorney attempting an Independent bid for Muscogee County Superior Court clerk has filed suit claiming the law requiring him to have 5,226 voter signatures to get on the ballot is unconstitutional.

Mike Garner filed the suit on Tuesday in Muscogee County Superior Court, naming as the defendant Muscogee County Board of Elections and Registrations Executive Director Nancy Boren, who must enforce the law.

The law says candidates trying to run as Independents must by July 12 submit supporting petitions signed by enough eligible voters to equal 5 percent of those registered during the last election for the office sought. That’s the origin of the 5,226 number.

But typically candidates must get many more signatures than that, as a significant number usually are invalidated.

“Plaintiff has learned that no independent candidate has ever been successful in Muscogee County getting the required signatures,” Garner wrote, later adding: “The signatures must be obtained on an approved form given by the election board. This form requires the name, printed name, date of birth and address of the voter. Voters are reluctant to give their addresses and date of birth to strangers in fear of identity theft.”

Garner hopes to run against Democratic nominee Ann Hardman, who defeated incumbent Linda Pierce in the May 24 party primary.

He cited the primary results in the suit, noting Hardman got 6,699 votes and Pierce got 4,480, so the law now compels him to get signatures equal to 45 percent of the votes cast in the primary — more than the loser, and almost as many as the winner, he wrote.

So high a goal is unconstitutional under the First and 14th Amendments, he said, asking that a judge set a more reasonable standard.

“A proper number, an obtainable number, a number that would restore to … independent candidates in this case their constitutional right to run for political office would be 500 to 750 signatures in place of the 5,226 signatures now required,” he wrote.

He based his arguments on a March 17 ruling by Richard W. Story, a federal judge for the Northern District of Georgia, who found unconstitutional a Georgia law requiring Independent presidential candidates seeking ballot access to get signatures equal to 1 percent of registered voters during the last election.

The plaintiffs in that case were Georgia’s Green Party and Constitution Party, who said the petition standard made it impossible for their candidates to make the ballot.

Delivering the 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision Anderson v. Celebrezze, regarding Independent candidate John Anderson’s missing a filing deadline to get on Ohio’s ballot, the justices wrote: “Our primary concern is with the tendency of ballot access restrictions to limit the field of candidates from which voters might choose.”

Being able to vote for the candidate of their choice is among Americans’ most basic rights, the court noted.

Judge Story based his ruling on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Anderson’s case.

While the state has an interest in ensuring fair and orderly elections and minimizing the confusion that could result from a crowded ballot, its restrictions must be narrowly tailored to advance a compelling state interest, Story decided.

State leaders could produce no evidence that having multiple candidates vying for office caused voter confusion, the judge wrote, yet history showed the law had kept legitimate candidates from gaining access to the Georgia ballot.

In 2008, for example, when Ralph Nader ran for president as an Independent, the state required 42,489 signatures to get on the ballot. Nader’s campaign decided this was an “excessive hurdle” and did not even attempt it, yet he managed to make the ballot in 45 other states.

Story noted that under Alabama law, an Independent presidential candidate seeking ballot access by petition needed only 5,000 names, yet Georgia this year required more than 50,000. Also Alabama set no start date for collecting signatures, only a deadline for submitting them; Georgia by contrast required candidates to gather the signatures in 180 days.

The judge decided the law was unconstitutionally burdensome, and ruled that until the Georgia General Assembly amends the statute, 7,500 valid signatures will be sufficient for an independent presidential candidate to make the state ballot.

Garner argues that same rationale should apply to candidates at the county level.

Attorneys for the city could not immediately be reached for comment. Boren said she had not seen the lawsuit.

Typically a judge from outside the six-county Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit that includes Columbus is appointed to hear such cases, to avoid the perception local judges are trying to influence elections here.

This story was originally published June 14, 2016 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Attorney sues over signatures needed to make ballot."