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ACLU sues SC for nixing Green Party nominee
8/8/2008 12:49 AM   0 comment(s) on this story E-mail this story to a friend



By JIM DAVENPORT

Associated Press

COLUMBIA -- The American Civil Liberties Union sued the South Carolina Election Commission on Thursday, charging the state has kept the Green Party from putting its candidate on November's ballot.

The ACLU said it filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbia because the commission wouldn't allow Eugene Platt on the ballot as a Green Party nominee for a Charleston-area state House seat after he lost his bid for the Democratic Party nomination in the June primary.

While the Democratic Party may want to use the state's so-called "sore loser" law to keep Platt off the ballot, "that doesn't trump the right of another party to run who they chose," ACLU lawyer Laughlin McDonald said in an interview as the lawsuit was filed.

The lawsuit asks the court to keep the state from using the sore loser statute to disqualify candidates and to require that Platt's name appear on the November ballot for the seat now held by Rep. Wallace Scarborough, R-Charleston. The sore loser statute prevents the loser of a primary election from appearing on a subsequent ballot as the nominee of a different political party.

McDonald said the law, on the books since the 1950s, is unconstitutional because the state can't deprive the Green Party of its choice of candidate or deprive voters of the right to vote for him.

In an e-mail sent by the ACLU, Gregg Jocoy of the South Carolina Green Party, said, "The state should not be in the business of telling parties and voters who their candidates should be."

John Crangle, state director of Common Cause, said he's been watching the issue develop. "I think there's a First Amendment issue there that he (Platt) might be able to successfully litigate."

McDonald and Crangle said the law conflicts with a state law allowing candidates to run as nominees of multiple parties with their name listed multiple times on a ballot and combine the resulting votes.

South Carolina, the ACLU notes in the lawsuit, is one of four states allowing that 'fusion voting' practice. Republican legislators have tried to end the practice, but they haven't been able to muster enough support to do so.

In the lawsuit, McDonald says South Carolina's all-or-nothing approach "transforms the candidate-selection process from a marketplace of ideas into a political minefield."

If the law lets candidates pursue multiple nominations, "the candidate runs the risk in doing so of total exclusion from the ballot if he fails to secure every nomination he seeks."

Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire said the law is clear: "No person who was defeated as a candidate for nomination to an office in a party primary or party convention shall have his name placed on the ballot for the ensuing general or special election."

"It protects the party's nomination process," Whitmire said. "It's what the law clearly says. Unless it changes, we can't do otherwise."

The Green Party can replace Platt as its nominee by Aug. 15, Whitmire said.





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