Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The Arizona Capitol Times reports that there is a Hearing scheduled in Green Party dispute:
The case of eleven Green Party Candidates allegedly recruited by Republicans will go before a judge on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell has scheduled a 1 p.m. hearing to consider a request by the Arizona Green Party to kick the candidates from the November ballot.
The Green and Democratic parties say the candidates were recruited by Republicans to siphon votes from Democrats.
The Green Party says it is not backing the disputed candidates, who used a little-known provision in state law to get on the ballot with just one write-in vote.
The East Valley Tribune adds:
Greens and Democrats say the Republican Party took advantage of a little-known provision in election law that applies only to the Green Party. It allows people to become a Green Party nominee with a single write-in vote.
Greens are asking the judge to prohibit use of that system and to remove from the ballot 11 of the party's 18 candidates.
Maricopa County Elections Director Karen Osborne says she needs to know by 7 a.m. Friday which names will be on the ballot.
That deadline is flexible, Ms. Osborne. You have no authority to dictate terms to a U.S. District Judge. Justice served takes precedence over your convenience.
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It’s over.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/7194116.html
Our fellow Green Party candidate for Congress in District 3, Leonard Clark – who was not named as a defendant in the flawed lawsuit by Arizona Green Party bosses against me and other outsider candidates – described the scene at today’s hearing at the AZCentral website http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/09/09/20100909arizona-green-party-candidate-dispute.html:
“I have to tell you I felt sickened today by what I saw taking place in the federal court room in Phoenix, Arizona and no it wasn’t the Tuna salad I had for lunch but instead it could have been “the rotten fish in Denmark” whose odor I was smelling wafting through the court room as the lawyers for the Green paty (of which I am a member) we’re trying to subvert the rights in concert with the democrat party of the “Grandpa candidate, who has been in the news over the last month or so. I watched this hard working man harangued and insulted by the Green party lawyer over and over !
At the end of the hearing, I went up to Grandpa, the candidate and told him how much I disagreed with what the leadership of my party was doing and that in my opinion it was a subversion of his civil rights. Outside, I hugged Grandpa and told him: “Welcome to the Green party brother.”
I have to say, that due to my being homeless in the past and having to work my a** off, I felt respect and sympathy for this older man called Grandpa and really infuriated at how his rights were being spat upon ! I was surprised to see Paul Charlton in court to represent him and I must say he did a good job showing what a despicable action our party leadership is taking in concert with the democrat party.
Folks, this is not the right message to be sending. We are a “Big Tent” party and should be welcoming and inclusive. In my opinion, this violates at least three tenets of our own party’s ten key values: 1.) Grass Roots Democracy 2.) Decentralization and 3.) Social Justice and Equal Oppurtunity
For more information on these Ten Key Values and where our party stands please go to: azgp.org
I could also smell the stench of hypocricy coming from the lawyers for my Green party as I thought of how the Republicans stole the 2000 elections by judicial coup and how Gore tried to throw out the overseas ballots of my fellow American soldiers also in that 2000 contest.
Politics may be dirty but that doesn’t mean we in the Green party have to constantly let the Republican and Democrat gangs make us copy their undemocratic subversion of votes and candidates who disagree with us and scare us !
I make this pledge to myself and to all of you now: If Grandpa is kicked off the ballot and therefore has his civil rights to vote and run for office arbitrarily taken away than I Leonard Clark, Arizona Endorsed candidate for the 3rd Congressional district will withdraw from this race because I will not stand by while one man is unfairly denied his civil rights by the democrat and leadership of the Green parties and I…am unfairly allowed to run as a write in for the Green Party of Arizona.
Leonard Clark
Arizona Endorsed Green party candidate Congressional district #3
9-9-10″
If you read the motion to dismiss filed yesterday by the defendants representing Maricopa County and Greenlee, Mohave, Navajo, and Yuma Counties, you would know that the deadline is statutory, and it has to do with a number of factors, particularly getting ballots to overseas military personnel in time. The back of the ballots has already been printed up, and this case — to be decided very soon, obviously — has been holding up the rest of the printing.
The motion asks that the case be dismissed on grounds of laches.
For non-lawyers, this essentially means that the plaintiffs sat on their rights for far too long and filed this eleventh-hour suit at an unreasonably late time when the deadline for printing ballots is early tomorrow morning.
As the motion states, the Arizona Green Party knew by July 15 who had filed as write-in candidates for Green Party primary elections. Yet they did nothing.
In my case, as the Secretary of State’s records show, I filed as a candidate for Arizona’s Sixth Congressional District Green Party primary on May 28, 2010. I know that date well because it was my parent’s 61st wedding anniversary. Yet the Arizona Green Party did nothing to challenge me.
In fact, they gave me access to their Yahoo Groups listserv of candidates and party documents; allowed me to vote at a party meeting on endorsement of other candidates; and interviewed me.
Yet their complaint filed with federal court lists me with ten other “sham” candidates and says we all registered with the party just a few days before filing, which they contradict in my case in another part of the document, though the complaint admits it doesn’t actually know when I registered as a Green voter. In fact, all the other candidate’s registration changes are listed as exhibits, but mine is curiously missing.
Anyway, back to the motion to dismiss. It goes on to say that the Arizona Green Party had notice of all they are alleging regarding the ballot-qualified (so-called “sham”) candidates were by mid-July, but they did nothing. You can see that in that document I posted on my website on August from Claudia Ellquist, one of the plaintiffs. (How could I get that document if I wasn’t given access to it by the Arizona Green Party?)
As the motion states, “Though the plaintiffs were well aware of these candidates before and up to the Primary Election, the Plaintiffs waited two weeks, till September 6, 2010, to file their Complaint. and motion for TRO [temporary restraining order], all on the eve of the General Election ballot. This delay will create significant problems for Maricopa County and the other counties if the Court orders deletion of these candidates from the General Election ballot.
Then it explains the difficulties, which you ignore or minimize, of delaying printing the ballot.
The motion then says the complaint must be dismissed under the doctrine of laches, quoting an Arizona Supreme Court case that says “a party’s failure to diligently prosecute an election appeal may in future cases result in a dismissal for laches,” then says:
This is one of those ‘future cases.’ See also McClung v. Bennett, 235 P.3d 1037, 1040 (Ariz. 2010) (Arizona 2010) (Arizona Supreme Court rules that dilatory conduct which unnecessarily accelerated litigation and jeopardized election officials’ timely compliance with statutory deadlines, supported dismissal of the appeal)
Laches generally bars a claim when the delay is unreasonable and results in prejudice to the opposing party. . .
In this case, the Plaintiffs offer no justification for their delay. They had ample advance knowledge of the write-in status of the challenged candidates by at least mid-July, of their nominee status since August 24, 2010. However, they failed to file their Complaint for two weeks, a large and critical time period that will prejudice the Counties, given the printing deadlines and other statutorily mandated deadlines. . .
Further, the record reflects that while Plaintiffs have had many weeks to prepare, research, and perfect their lengthy Complaint and motion for TRO [our comment: not enough to catch the misstatements of facts or pure lies contained in it], the County defendants have been afforded less than two days (September 7 and 8) to review the Plaintiff’s lengthy pleadings and the record, and to draft their Response – at the same time their clients are attempting to finalize the ballots on a timely basis. . .
Plaintiffs let these issues languish for weeks and months (as early as mid-July) before bringing it to the Court’s attention. They should not be rewarded for their delay.
* * *
That was filed yesterday. Just this morning an answer to the Arizona Green Party complaint was filed by Laura Dean-Lytle, in her official capacity as Recorder for Pinal County, and Bryan Martyn, Pete Rios and David Snider, in their official capacity as members of the Board of Supervisors for Pinal County (hereinafter “Pinal County Defendants”).
The Pinal County Defendants stated they were “without sufficient to form a belief as to the truthfulness” of most of the allegations, specifically including the allegations about my own party registration as a Pinal County Voter, and thus were denying the allegations.
The hearing is now over, and Judge Campbell should rule soon.