Supreme Court leaves Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein off the ballot in Nevada

girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to News@lemmy.world – 375 points –
Supreme Court leaves Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein off the ballot in Nevada
apnews.com

The Supreme Court has rejected an emergency appeal from Nevada’s Green Party seeking to include presidential candidate Jill Stein on the ballot in the battleground state.

The court’s order Friday, without any noted dissents, allows ballot preparation and printing to proceed in Nevada without Stein and other Green Party candidates included.

The outcome is a victory for Democrats who had challenged the Greens’ inclusion on the ballot in a state with a history of extremely close statewide races. In 2020, President Joe Biden outpaced former President Donald Trump by fewer than 35,000 votes in the state.

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Same time next Presidential election, Jill?

I mean she could use the time between to build local support for the Green Party in lots of places. I guess that isn't what she's after.

And God forbid they spend any money on local elections where they can affect things like I don't know actual green party issues.

Sure usually hangs out in Russia between elections, right?

while normally I'd be upset if they were running somebody with some kind of real intent to push real issues, its clear Stein is mostly isnt interested in pushing anything but conspiracy theories and russian appeasement.

But if we don't vote 3rd party then democrats will never do the exact things I want, or some shit

I'll be voting solid blue regardless, but the "exact things I want" in regards to Democrats is not helping a genocide, because I thought that was a bar even they could pass.

I'm not surprised they failed even that, but it does radicalize me further and solidify my position that all liberals that call themselves leftists out of rampant ignorance can fuck off forever.

And that will definitely change by voting 3rd party Ina presidential election!!

Yes, that latter point does describe how well you have summarized other people's arguments. Good luck to you on that one.

Considering there is not a good argument for voting for a third party presidential candidate in this election vs. not voting at all, I don't think the summary matters.

What "conspiracy theories"? Do you think that the genocide in Gaza is a conspiracy theory?

people forget about her vaccine skepticism, which is sad in a post covid world. There's a reason she didnt run in 2020

Stein is pro-vaccine, as she has stated in numerous interviews. If she had won in 2016, we would've had a medical doctor in the White House during a pandemic, and hundreds of thousands of lives could've been saved.

Oh dear, that’s going to make her path to an electoral college victory harder, isn’t it.

She has 49 other states she can fail to win in...

but still siphon enough votes to hand trump the whitehouse

I feel like she isn't on the ballot in a large number of states. I feel like basic research would reveal this fact. I feel like she isn't going to siphon many votes away from Harris. I know for sure that people want to be able to blame her if Harris loses.

Why can’t these candidates file proper forms? What the hell is so difficult about that?

There are a miniscule number of presidential candidates running in a given year, so I assume that the UX on the process isn't very optimized.

running for president is literally all she does. she should be able to speedrun this by now.

They were given the wrong forms by the secretary of state. Its obvious sabotage.

Ha ha. After being shown the forms your face saving argument changes. Now they were the wrong forms.

I never said they werent and still no one has been able to show them to me

Except for the links you were given a while ago! 😂

You aren’t the arbiter of truth on the matter. You don’t need to see the forms. Stein is out and you can piss and moan about it all you like.

I guess not needing to see evidence is how yall get so ignorant

Because everything is always "their" fault right? Secretary of state is corrupt, judge is corrupt... Can't just be that someone that crawls out from under her rock once every 4 years has not used the last 4 years to setup a competent organisation.

Theres a lot of ignorance here. She doesnt show up once every four years, you assume that because you only hear about her once every four years. She's not as active, understandably, on non-election years, but is still doing political work and promoting her party and giving talks.

Yes, the secretary of state gave them the wrong forms and guidance, and the courts are banning a political party from an election on a technicality against the spirit of the law.

So "they" did it... This lady is running for office of the president of the US. If she can't even get this figured out.. especially if she knows the evil Dems are out to sabotage her.. how is she fit to run for president. It's not as if the R's or other parties will always have her best interests at heart either.

And how many other political positions does her party have obtained in local elections during the last 8 years?

Yes, i explained them doing it. Its not a matter of figuring out, its fighting against the corruption of the party currently in power employing all the anti-competitive tactics they can. That only happens when they have enough support to win that fight. Free will exists and they cant force you to not support the side that is fighting to keep competition off the ballots. Only hope that people support democracy.

The petition forms were faulty. Be nice if we were told what was wrong with them

Nevada uses two forms for gathering signatures, one for candidates and another for ballot initiatives. The Secretary of State gave the Green Party the wrong form. The forms are basically identical.

It is not the first time Democrats has used dubious methods to deprive Green Party ballot access.

The Green party was represented at the Supreme Court by Jay Sekulow, a Trump ally who was part of the president’s legal team during his first impeachment trial.

Yeah sure, it's the Democrats who are being dubious here...

And that is followed by

Across the country, a network of Republican political operatives, lawyers and their allies is trying to shape November’s election in ways that favor Trump. Their goal is to prop up third-party candidates, including Stein and Cornel West who offer liberal voters an alternative that could siphon away support from Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

Not Democratic party malfeasance.

It is - the wrong forms were disbursed and then rejected while all the actual requirements were fulfilled.

This is clearly anti-democratic and unlikely to have any actual effect on the election outside making Democrats look bad.

This is clearly anti-democratic and unlikely to have any actual effect on the election outside making Democrats look bad.

No. If it reflects negatively on anyone it would be the Nevada and US courts, the Nevada official who handed out the paperwork, and of course the Stein operation for not catching it. The last two have the capacity to catch this. Not the Democratic party.

And no one in the Green Party looked at the forms to make sure they had the right ones? How many people handled those forms without noticing they were wrong? Are they too used to Cyrillic that it's hard to read English forms?

They did make sure, by seeking guidance from the person that runs the election.

Having read the forms necessary to get a candidate or initiative on the ballot, I can tell you they are not hard to tell apart if you actually read them. A campaign that is serious about their stated goals would do the basic work of reading the form.

I havent been able to find them forms yet, do you have links to Nevada's?

Apologies, but I was reading them in person so I don't have links to them. Maybe try on the website for the secretary of state in Nevada?

Democrats has used dubious methods

you misspelled 'Green Party incompetence and/or procrastination'

The outcome is a victory for Democrats who had challenged the Greens’ inclusion on the ballot

Seems as fishy as Stein's intentions.

The outcome would either be a victory for the Democrats or a victory for the Republicans. So what part is fishy?

On top of that, Nevada's governor is a Republican.

Nah, keeping Stein on the ballot (for this reason) would be a win for our democracy. If there's a credible case to formally accuse her of being a Russian asset and bar her from participation on those grounds I'm happy to see it go through. This is just arbitrary and authoritarian. I'm not okay with embracing authoritarianism to overcome fascism - there are better tools to beat Trump.

If there’s a credible case to formally accuse her of being a Russian asset

Yea, I'm familiar with the photo - that's why I mentioned a case to formally bar her above. That photo could lead to an absolutely valid prohibition on participating in elections - so let's go that route instead of bureaucratic bullshit.

Or campaigns could be expected to pay attention to the text of a document given to them.

Let's say you wanted to replace your bathtub and went to the city to get a permit to work on shared building plumbing - you get the form for "Water basin modifications" and pass it off to be signed by your contractor and the building's HOA council and then add all the relevant details about sizing and materials involved.

You return the form and are told to await a response by mail... six weeks later it hasn't arrived. It turns out that "Water basin modification" form you were issued was actually for replacing an underlayer but limited to showers - you actually needed the "Water (standing) basin modification" form that was valid for bathtubs. Now everything you did with the form (getting it signed by various parties, filling in sizing and material information) was correct - so wouldn't it be really nice if the clerk handling your form had said "Whoops lets just staple the form you filled out to the correct one and notarize the correction, then we can file it and send you a reply" instead of just rejecting it without a clear reason?

People working in these systems can be reasonable and flexible.

Terrible analogy. Replacing my bathtub is not the same as running for president and doesn't come with anything close to the responsibilities.

This is literally just a case of not reading the fine print.

I'm not trying to get the state of Nevada to select me to replace bathtubs for the federal government. (Neither is Jill in this analogy, of course, she is a Russian asset. But for sake of argument.)

Weird little strawman comparison replacing nationwide responsibility with individual responsibility and an entire campaign team expected to be able to fill out forms with an individual assumed to be unfamiliar with them.

Also, if I get fucked over by the city because I didn't read the fine print, that's my problem. If the president gets fucked over because they don't read the fine print, that's the country's problem.

Analogies aren't always strawmen, I wrote that up to make the situation more relatable since it's easy to criticize bureaucracy as being obvious until you're knee deep in it.

...you want to use State power to bar a US citizen from running for office because she appeared in a photo, but you're accusing us of being arbitrary and authoritarian?

No? If Stein will be disqualified I want it to go through the courts rather than being at the whims of bureaucracy.

I'd like an actual burden of proof for someone to be ineligible to run for president.

The Supreme Court has rejected an emergency appeal from Nevada’s Green Party seeking to include presidential candidate Jill Stein on the ballot in the battleground state.

I'm aware, but it's for bureaucratic reasons and has nothing to do with everyone who is celebrating by posting the pictures of her dining with Putin. I think this particular route to disqualification is rather silly and likely to be a abused by bad actors in the future... so the democrats suing to keep her off the ballot is bad for PR, functionally accomplishes nothing in view of the wider election, and may come back to bite them. It's really disappointing they picked up this fight.

Someone who's campaign doesn't bother to read the forms they're submitting to be included on the ballot should not be considered a serious candidate. Russian stooge or not Stein is incompetent and uncommitted to her espoused ideals.

They didn’t file the correct paperwork. They are not a victim here. They are ducking adults representing a ducking national party. You check the forms and make sure they are correct before you file them.

This is not hard. Every adult does it multiple times every year for all sorts of reasons. It’s a basic citizenship skill.

The fact that you can mess this up AND REFUSE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT like a ducking toddler makes it very clear they are not a serious political party.

They were given the wrong forms when they requested the correct ones - the two forms are nearly indistinguishable and neither the issuer nor collector noticed the mistake at the time.

This was a really minor bureaucratic screw up and denying the green party a place on the ballot because of the mistake is just a bad look.

Good thing we don't expect a president and their staff to be able to pay attention to detail.

Given the news currently brewing in Georgia we can expect some similar bureaucratic bullshit to be used against the Harris campaign - it'll be bullshit just like this is bullshit.

You know these people have lawyers, right? It's literally a lawyer's job to go over these documents with a fine-toothed comb specifically due to these sort of things.

Most voters don't have an attorney checking their mail-in ballot.

Yes? And? This is about a campaign, not the people who vote for them. Maybe you want a president who can be tricked by something this easy, but I'd say most people would want a president who can avoid such simple pitfalls.

I don't think running for elected office should require a team of high paid lawyers - president in our current system is unrealistic for any person off the street but part of the reason we have AOC today is because the election registration process is accessible to people who have limited resources but a lot of enthusiasm.

Forms like this shouldn't require the fine toothed comb.

part of the reason we have AOC today is because the election registration process is accessible to people who have limited resources but a lot of enthusiasm.

You could not have picked a worse example for your position.

AOC crosses the Ts. She dots the Is. And she sure as shit DOES NOT SUBMIT THE WRONG FORM WHEN FILLING FOR AN ELECTION.

These guys are no AOC.

You don't think this shit happens to people after they become president too? I'm sorry, if this was political dirty tricks and you can't handle really basic political dirty tricks, you deserve what you get.

Yes. The GP said all of that. The thing is, none of it matters. It’s the responsibility of the submitter to submit the correct forms. It’s bureaucracy 101.

Also, of course the forms are similar. They are from the same agency for a similar purpose. But details matter in this business.

Every legal form has a form number. Anyone practicing law should know what number they require and verify if it's incorrect. Her legal team shit the bed

I'm glad she's not on the ballot. But I don't like these bad faith technicalities. Although I do put 90% of the blame on the enforcers.

We just had a ballot initiative in Arkansas fall off because they were told the wrong thing by officials. And even then, they did all the things they were supposed to do (similar to this situation).

So the party that wants to have the responsibility of running the most powerful nation in the world didn't double check the title of the paperwork they submitted?

This isn't a normal person getting the wrong tax form in the mail and not noticing it. This is an entire party with nationwide offices and tons of people supporting it failing to recognize they were filling out the wrong form.

The more important question is, "when did they submit the paperwork and when were they notified that the paperwork was incorrect?" If the gap is really small, then they should have filed sooner. If the gap was really long, then maybe there was some fuckery going on.

EDIT - That said, I still hate when minor technicalities thwart important things.

Yeah, except that they did double check. That's fairly clear if you go back and read what happened when. You can argue that they should have triple checked or checked with different people, if you want to.

The Secretary of State gave the Green Party the Green Party the wrong form

LMFAO at trying to blame a secretary of state for a very old and experienced political party using the wrong damn form

If you think Democrats are bad, you should see hostile foreign entities. If you can't do your bureaucratic due diligence to double check election forms, you are absolutely not qualified to lead an entire country.

She seemed like a good alternative to Trump and Clinton at the time. But looking back I realize she was just put there by Putin to draw away lesser evil votes from Clinton so Trump could win. Another reason the Democratic Party fucked up by not allowing centrist or leftist candidates like Sanders even when they'd have a way better chance of winning by getting a lot of people to actually vote because they'd have a candidate they like rather than just voting against the other guy.

I really like Saunders, but big-C capitalists hate him because he actually works for the people. And that's why he'll never be POTUS or VP.

:/

Right and it's why well never have a left of center candidate at all unless we get money out of politics. Which is not going to happen in the US. We're stuck with moderate conservatives like Biden and Harris as the only option south of fascism.

Again.... I might just go back too being a Dem. I tried 3rd party but, this stuff keeps happing. I like the ideals just no was too do it from a third party way for the time being. Gotta change from with in I guess.

Not from within, from underneath. You effect change at the lower levels. Political change comes from the ground up. That's why Jill Stein is so frustrating cuz she takes all the money and attention that could be spent somewhere useful and instead spends it on a boondoggle for her own personal gain.

This. The Brits have a first past the post system. Greens now are winning mayorships and parliament seats and making deals with labor not to split the vote in their favor because they have been building local support for decades.

They are a force in their districts, so they get elected to office in their districts. Do that to a few dozen districts and you can meaningfully affect the balance of power in Westminster. Then you start getting into coalitions and supplying ministers.

You can’t just wake up once every four years and hope to be anything but a spoiler candidate.

The two party system is incredibly frustrating. There is also a feeling of helplessness because the path to change is unclear. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans truly want more competition

The thing about change, if you're only looking at it from a big picture and not a large time period, it might look static. But there's lots of changes.

What you have to do is be local with your change. Obama was a community organizer and it's often talked about as as something that has had such an impact, it's changed everything.

All politics are local.

Stein will always fail because she's always attempting to create the changes from top down. The USA will never work like that.

It's not a question of wanting competition or not. Political parties by nature will attempt to get as strong a coalition as they can, until they reach a size large enough that bisecting the party still leaves one half in power and some internal disagreememt triggers the split.

Fringe parties in America, like the Green and Libertarian parties, arent oppressed by some conspiracy between Rs and Ds. Rather, they are left at the fringe because they do not have any power worth pledging to, for the simple fact that in the american single-rep plurality-wins system tbere is no prize for second place.

Voters who like the current office holder work to keep them in power and those who do not work with the opposition to remove the incumbent from power. Anyone not joining one of these sides serves only as a tool for one side against the other, since anything but a vote for the runner up is an effective endorsrment of the eventual winner.

The American system is imperfect and could be a lot better, but fringe parties and vanity campaigns do nothing to actually encourage systemic change.

Greens local, Dems for state and nation. You are just throwing away your vote otherwise.

Not even Greens, they don't put any serious effort into local elections either. Any other (serious) third party would be better locally.

Spend energy pushing for alternative voting methods like ranked choice, approval, or STAR voting. Those have seen success up to state levels.

I'm in FL, so the alternative voting methods is mostly illegal, and to undo it is unlikely for a little while (20 or 30 years).

Oy. Good old party of freedom...

Although it only bans ranked choice voting so at the very least approval voting would be an option. The STAR method might be iffy.

Regardless, changing local voting methods is much more likely than a 3rd party candidate getting elected to the presidency with no candidates at the local level.

Third parties only seem interested in the presidency. Instead the should work on local elections instead. Build up to federal seats but that is not their goal. They only want to spoil one party nowadays.

Good on you! Please still get involved in changing the system and supporting third parties, but, for now, that work is most effective in local elections and between the general elections. That, and voting in the D or R primaries to vote out incumbents or to select a party candidate who's more in line with your priorities.

More good news on a Friday.

Sure is. Wonderful to see all the rage from the ass scratchers in these comments

Good. She can’t help Trump any more than she already has.

Jill Stein is unqualified to be president and generally has no idea what she is talking about.

And democrats applaud as an election becomes less democratic

It is not undemocratic to be barred from the ballot because your campaign did not bother reading the fine print on the paperwork to make sure it's all correct. It's not the level of attention to detail or responsibility I would want from a presidential administration either.

Ive yet to have anyone actually cite the forms and what specifically was overlooked. Like somewhere it just states this form not admissable for candidate qualification.

All of this is incredibly self serving arguments, you would be having quite an outrage if a democrat was barred from an election because of fine print technicality. Thats not what you actually care about, you only care that people you dont like suffered from it.

You didn't look very hard. This took seconds:

Under Nevada law, the Green Party needed to obtain just over 10,000 valid signatures to get its candidates on the ballot for the 2024 general election. The petitions containing the signatures are also required to include an affidavit from the people who circulated the petitions.

As it came to the Supreme Court, the dispute centered on the content of that affidavit. For minor political parties seeking access to the ballot, Nevada law requires the affidavit to include an attestation that the person who circulated the petition believes that each person signing the petition is registered to vote in the county where she lives.

The affidavit originally submitted with the Green Party’s petition in July 2023 was the correct one. However, because the petition that the Green Party submitted contained a separate mistake, an employee in the secretary of state’s office sent the party a sample petition that included the wrong affidavit – for use with petitions to put initiatives and referenda on the ballot. As a result, the affidavits that the Green Party later submitted with its petitions did not contain the attestation required for access to the ballot.

The secretary of state eventually announced that the Green Party had submitted enough signatures to qualify for the 2024 general election ballot.

The Nevada Democratic Party went to state court in June of this year, arguing that the signatures were invalid because the Green Party had used the wrong affidavit.

https://amylhowe.com/2024/09/20/supreme-court-rejects-green-party-bid-to-appear-on-2024-nevada-ballot/

Was it a fuckup by the Secretary of State or just a ratfuck? Yes. Does that mean the campaign shouldn't have lacked the attention to detail to be able to avoid it? No. They didn't bother checking to find out that everything was as it should be. And that is not who people should want running the country. If they get thrown off this easily, what will it be like when they're negotiating things like treaties and trade agreements?

You're the second person ive asked to cite the forms in question, who links to an article about the court case instead.

The forms, like the forms the green party allegedly received copies of that were incorrect, i am asking to see those forms.

Again. Seconds.

https://www.nvsos.gov/sos/home/showpublisheddocument/12729/638400602817830000

And this is the last time I'm doing your homework for you.

He doesn’t want to see the forms. He just wants to be right.

I guess they don't have to click on the link if they don't want.

Incidentally, the language in the affidavit makes it pretty clear what it's for.

Why are you saying again like you found them the first time. So, this is the form the secretary of state handed out to a party asking for the form to enter an election

Do keep up.

like you found them the first time.

I see, you don't understand that when someone says "again," they mean that they are repeating the thing they said the first time.

This should help:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/again

By the way, you could also thank me for providing the document you said no one would provide you with and which you couldn't take a couple of seconds to find yourself.

And asking two people was easier than using a search engine?

I did search, and like these two people i was getting articles about the court case instead of the forms.

Hostility to citation just makes political discussion less informed.

Democrats applaud bc she is another Republican plant. They like doing that. If you want to vote for her, you still can. Democracy

No, you cant, most states including nevada do not allow write in votes.

Most states do and it sounds like you should worry about local more then federal if that's the case.

the State of Nevada does not allow individuals to write in a candidate’s name for any office. (NRS 293.270 (2))

https://www.nvsos.gov/sos/sos-information/office-facts/faqs-all-division/elections

Per the Republican caucus they didn't allow write-ins in Nevada. Looking at your post, those people will not help you. You should be looking for an actual candidate in your state that has a chance.

Jill Stein is not the one. She is a Putin simp. Her goal is to disrupt the Democrats chance to win. I know it sucks (I live in NC) but you need local winners for a third party. Eventually that will lead to a national third party.

Republican caucus? This is nevada state law, not party convention rules. Im talking about democracy and freedom to vote for people. You can make arguments supporting voting for your candidate or why people shouldnt vote for another. But trying to win an election by outright forbidding the ability to vote for an opponent is, sitting eerily well with people.

Sounds like the secretary of the state fucked you. Not sure when they banned write-ins ( Every state should have it.)

I still stand by my main point, third parties need to put an effort in local elections to change the laws. You never hear about them during mid-terms. They only want the presidency and that will never happen.

Ill give you a hint, theyre banned by the same people for the same reason third parties get banned from participating in democracy.

Jill Stein filled out the wrong paper work and never corrected it. It makes her seem incompetent.

Dems, rightfully, challenged that she miss the deadline and had the wrong paperwork. See Florida for why these is right. They routinely have candidates of the same name to confuse people. Always targeted at the Democratic party. They don't want to win, they just want to make sure Democrats lose.

Jill Stein is looking for special treatment. She wants to be apart of everything but not do the minimal requirements. Is the system rigged? Yes, look at Bernie Sanders for example. He came up through the local system as an independent. Built a base and then went national where he is still an independent. He switched to Democrat for the president bid and got fucked over. However, he built a viable third party in Vermont and he is still and independent today. Stein is the new Tulsi Gabbard but with less support.

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