Conyers' Ballot Case - More Than A Name On A Ballot

"This Member of the Government was @ first considered as the most harmless & helpless of all its organs.  But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is ... by sapping & mining slyly & without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt."  Thomas Jefferson writing to Edward Livingston in 1825, almost a quarter of a century after Jefferson first capitulated & allowed the very judicial fiat orchestrated by John Marshall in 1803 that threatens our republic today.

 

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Thanks to everyone who signed the petition to get my friend Jim Gawron on the ballot for this November's congressional election in NJ's 7th district.  At the start I thought I might get 10 to 12 signatures in the district – we wound up with over 50 – more than half the number Jim needs just from our effort alone.  It was fun working with everyone on this project – sorry time ran out because I know we had more to give.

 

Now my focus on Jim's NJ petition helped make me aware of the problems I heard that 85 year old - 25 term (i.e., 50 years in office) Michigan Congressman John Conyers was having with a similar petition process in his district regarding the Michigan Democrat primary in August.  Like anyone running for office, in order to be on the ballot, Conyers needed a petition signed by a statute-required number of registered voters in accordance with election regulations.  In Conyers' case he fell 40% short of the required number of signatures because his circulators (people like me in Jim's case) did not follow the statutes according to Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett whose opinion was later confirmed by Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson – two very courageous women when you consider that Conyers wins with 80% or more of the vote. 

 

But shortly after Clerk Garrett's decision – Garrett is the elected election official - that attempted to follow the statutes, U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman ordered that Conyers' name be placed on the ballot - many petitions had been thrown out by Garrett because the people who gathered signatures were not registered voters or listed a wrong registration address – both violations of the Michigan statutes.  These sort of similar rules were not a technicality to those of us in NJ, who knew the rules & followed them, in gathering signatures for Jim.

 

Leitman's injunction that ordered Conyers' name be placed on the Michigan primary ballot cited a similar Ohio election law that put strict requirements on circulators that had been struck down as unconstitutional by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2008 (an unconstitutional act in & of itself as readers of RTE know) as the basis of his decision.  Leitman said Garrett's decision put serious limitations on the free speech rights of the circulators, the people who signed the petitions, & Conyers.  Leitman also said the failure to comply with the Registration Statute was the result of good faith mistakes by people who believed they were in compliance with the statute.  This is not only ridiculous but lawless & uses our principles of liberty as a weapon against us to say anything goes when it suits the statists.

 

This type of decision also gives an election official with a political bent (think statist) the incentive to ignore election regulations & put anyone's name on a ballot regardless of how suspicious a petition may look to anyone trying to maintain objectivity.  In other words a very bad legal precedent.

 

In the above account the offenses to our liberty & constitutional republic start with an activist judge unmistakably & blatantly violating his oath to the Constitution which in this case prescribes that each State Legislature will determine the election rules within their State – which is exactly what happened.  This appointed judge ignored the statutes that elected state officials passed into law & dreamed up his own precedents & logic to overrule an elected Clerk & the Michigan Secretary of State, who is not only elected but is 3rd in line to be governor (similar to the Speaker of the House on the federal level).

 

There is a long history in America of judicial activism designed to thwart our freedoms with no push back from the elected branches meaning the elected branches also are not following their oaths to support the Constitution.  This goes all the way back to 1803 when President Thomas Jefferson allowed Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshal to unilaterally "determine that the Supreme Court had the power to decide cases about the constitutionality of congressional or executive actions & when it deemed they violated the Constitution – overturn them."  Source "Men In Black" by Marl Levin.

 

With regard specifically to election activism I still haven't gotten over the one that occurred in 2002 when the NJ Judiciary ignored the election statutes in the federal Senate race in NJ & placed the then aging Frank Lautenberg on the ballot after Robert Torricelli, the legitimate candidate, was forced to withdraw with less time remaining than the statute allowed for a replacement to be named.  There was no consideration for Torricelli's opponent who had prepared & campaigned on running against the Torch.  Of course Lautenberg won & easily held the seat until his death over a decade later.

 

In none of these or any other activist-judge incidents for that matter has the Legislative or Executive branches fought back – in fact both elected branches have gone out of their way to take cases to the courts for resolution.  This will be the subject of another post that will detail how all three branches of government work together to keep their power & deny yours.  The Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision expected later this month may very well prompt this future post.

 

So, based on the above, I don't expect much push back from the local Michigan legislative branch.  In the meantime the Clerk & Secretary of State are contemplating whether or not to appeal Leitman's decision – a strategy I obviously don't recommend for the above reasons.

 

What then should they do? 

 

Since the Court on every level has proven incapable of following their original function as envisioned by our Founders the Clerk & Secretary of State have another choice.  And that is to follow both of their oaths to the Constitution & declare Leitman's decision unconstitutional thereby not putting Conyers' name on the ballot. 

 

This action by these two courageous women will reach much farther than the Michigan primary – it will help start the needed mindset change of America if they dare great enough to do it.