Did Bush camp err on ballot papers?
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| Thu, 09-16-2004 - 2:35pm |
The Presidential Campaign
Did Bush camp err on ballot papers?
Democrats say the president may have missed Florida's filing deadline, but say they don't plan a challenge.
By STEVE BOUSQUET, Times Staff Writer
Published September 11, 2004
TALLAHASSEE - After the Florida election fiasco of 2000, the most obscure parts of state election law keep attracting attention.
The latest effort to disqualify Ralph Nader as a presidential candidate in Florida has led to renewed scrutiny of papers filed by other candidates - including President Bush.
State law sets a Sept. 1 deadline for the governor to certify a list of presidential electors for each party's candidates.
But Sept. 1 was also the day President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were being nominated at their party's convention in New York. Consequently, some of their paperwork did not arrive at state elections headquarters until Sept. 2, a day after Gov. Jeb Bush certified the candidates for president.
Paperwork problem?
No, says Secretary of State Glenda Hood's office.
Spokeswoman Jenny Nash said Friday the law is clear: The deadline applies to the governor and the list of presidential electors, not to the candidates themselves. The list of Republican electors released by Hood's office does not show a time stamp indicating when the document was received by the state.
Democrats said they aren't so sure, but they won't challenge the Bush campaign's papers.
Florida Democratic Party chairman Scott Maddox said he knew the president's certificate of nomination did not reach the state until Sept. 2, but he said he decided not to make an issue of it.
"To keep an incumbent president off the ballot in a swing state the size of Florida because of a technicality, I just don't think would be right," Maddox said.
Nader's Reform Party candidacy in Florida is much different, Maddox said.
"There is no Reform Party. It is a sham. And Ralph Nader was using a hoax party to gain access to the ballot," Maddox said.
But Julia Aires, a Green Party activist from Sarasota who has watched Democrats and others battle to keep Nader's name off the ballot, said a minor party probably could not have gotten away with the same thing.
"If the Green Party or the Reform Party had not gotten their names in by Sept. 1 and they said, "You missed the deadline,' I don't think we'd have a leg to stand on," she said. "They would have kept us off the ballot on a technicality if they could have."
Circuit Judge P. Kevin Davey in Tallahassee agreed with the Democrats and others who had filed suit seeking to keep Nader off the ballot. Davey ordered the state to keep Nader's name off the ballot, though his order applies only to about 50,000 overseas absentee ballots set to go in the mail next week.
The judge ruled that the Reform Party "fails in almost every conceivable criteria of what constitutes a national party."
Nader, running mate Peter Camejo and the Reform Party filed an appeal of that decision Friday, asking the First District Court of Appeal to suspend Davey's order pending a full review of the case.
In their complaint, they said neither Nader nor Camejo had an attorney present in court during a six-hour hearing Wednesday.
Democratic candidate John Kerry's paperwork was time-stamped at the state elections office on Aug. 2, days after his party's convention and nearly a month before the Sept. 1 deadline.
Today's headlines
# The Presidential CampaignDid Bush camp err on ballot papers?

http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-bush03.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2003_11/002695.php#066412
One day?
Please.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/Conventions_020510.html
Late GOP Convention a Maybe
Republicans Plan For a Post Labor Day Convention in 2004
By Marc Ambinder
W A S H I N G T O N, May 13 — There is a real possibility that the Republican Party could hold its national nominating convention in early September of 2004, ending just before the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Republican leaders say.
Republican Party officials said that there is little opposition among planners and strategists to holding the event just after Labor Day, though a final decision on dates hasn't been made.
They admit that such a decision would have consequences on presidential debates, general election fund raising, and political momentum and would abut the memory of a pivotal historical moment.
Officials say no city is the front-runner for site selection. Sites currently in the running include New York, Nashville, Boston, Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, Tampa, and Charlotte. New York is the sentimental and strategic choice of several Republicans familiar with the selection process.
The ultimate decisions on timing and location will be made by the president and his top political aides.
A post-Labor Day meeting would box in Democrats a bit. By tradition, the party in the White House holds its convention second, which would leave Democrats with a number of unappealing summer periods to hold their event, and competition from the Summer Olympics might be a factor.
There is at least one bundle of obstacles to a late convention.
13 states set hard, late August and early September deadlines for candidate nominations, in part because election officials need time to print ballots, according to a review of the relevant election laws.
Those states are Alabama, Alaska, the District of Columbia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa Louisanna, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
Section 13-25-101 of the Montana election code requires that political parties certify presidential candidates 75 days before the November elections — by August 18, in 2004.
Michigan's code says this: "The chairperson and the secretary of the state central committee of each political party shall, within 1 business day after the conclusion of the state convention, forward by registered or certified mail a certificate containing the names of the candidates for electors to the secretary of state."
By statute, the time frame for state party conventions are tied to the election day. In 2004, they need to take place by September 6.
Virginia must solidify its presidential nominating slate by August 20, 2004, according to a schedule set by state law.
The legislatures could theoretically change the dates by amending the law, or they could vote in favor of some sort of waiver.
"Maybe it just happens that the states where they might face legal problems would be the ones where they're planning to change these laws," said Richard Winger, an expert on ballot access.
But in eight of the 13 states, Democrats control at least one house of the legislature or they have the governorship. It is safe to assume that roughly the same balance will exist in 2004.
"If our convention did happen to bump up against any of those dates, we'll work with those states to ensure that the presidential ticket is said Jim Dyke, a Republican National Committee spokesperson.
Also, it's not clear what late convention might do to upend the presidential debate schedule. Bush tried to cut the Commission on Presidential Debates out of the process last time, and is known to still harbor no particular fondness for the bipartisan group.
Agreeing to debate formats, locations and times usually requires drawn-out negotiations among the presidential campaigns, based in part on the prevailing post-convention dynamic. Throw in a late convention and the World Series, and the president might well be in the driver's seat in terms of the number, format, sponsorship, and dates of the debates.
Campaigns traditionally count on at least a month and a half between the end of a convention and the first face-to-face debate.
In 1996, the first Clinton-Perot-Dole debate took place on Oct. 6. In 2000, Al Gore and George W. Bush met in Massachusetts on Oct. 5, well after the July and early August conventions.
There are usually several phases of post-convention campaigning: the bounce period, wherein the media pay close attention to the two nominees for the first time, the debates, where messages are broadcast to likely voters, and the sprint to the finish, where get-out-the-vote efforts matter.
The Republican ticket might also benefit from a unique dynamic produced by federal election law.
It's accepted by Democrats that President Bush may benefit from the changes to the law most likely to survive court challenges.
Already a record-setting hard money fund raiser, he'd be able to collect $2,000 (instead of $1,000) from every person who supported him in 2000, potentially padding his campaign account with more than $175 million for the primary cycle alone.
Bush is expected to once again, as he did in 2000, refuse federal match funds in 2004, and with no major nomination opposition expected, he'd have a tremendous amount of money to spend wherever he wanted, with no state-by-state limits that shackle those candidates who accept matching funds.
Chuck Todd, editor in chief of the Hotline, a daily political digest, has noted that a later convention would allow the president to spend his money in concentrated increments until he was nominated. Bush could then announce his intention to accept federal money for the general election campaign. According to figures adjusted for inflation, the Democratic and Republican nominee will receive anywhere between $70 million and $73 million for the final few months of the election.
According to statute, they can spend the money the moment they're nominated, but they can't transfer any money leftover from their primary account.
The likely Democratic candidate, taxed by a competitive primary, would begin to spend his $73 million grant much earlier — when he was nominated on July 22 or 23.
Bush would get to spend the same amount, but since he'd be nominated much later, he'd have comparatively more to spend pro-rated over time.
First, it would minimize the time during which had to rely on public money, if he accepted it, which he did. (here's an article which explains how that all works, and includes the story of how the Kerry campaign toyed with the idea of a counter-stunt, which they decided not to do. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040614ta_talk_hertzberg )
Second, the Bush campaign wanted the convention, in NYC, as close to the September 11th anniversary as possible. But between the time the convention was scheduled and when it actually happened, the political mood had changed enough that the President didn't even attend the 3rd Anniversary ceremony. Perhaps the 9/11 commission report and Richard Clarke's book took some of the oomph out of a second megaphone speech. Perhaps the backlash against his first ad that showed a flag drapped corpse being pulled from the rubble made his advisors think twice about going there in person. I don't know.
And third, it shortens the amount of time in which you can have debates, which probably lessens the amount of debates you can have. The incumbent usually doesn't want to debate, since it shows him or her on equal ground with the challenger, and Bush probably really doesn't want to debate, since he's not so good at thinking on his feet.