“Judge’s Lower Bar for Third Party Candidates Intrigues Republican Election Lawyers”

Daily Report:

The chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association said Friday that a federal judge’s decision to strike down Georgia’s ballot access law as unconstitutionally restrictive could have national ramifications for the 2016 presidential race.

U.S. District Judge Richard Story’s March 17 order in the four-year-old case brought by Georgia’s Green Party and Constitution Party would significantly lower the qualifying threshold for third-party candidates seeking a place on this year’s presidential ballot.

Randy Evans, a Dentons partner in Atlanta who is also a member of the Republican National Committee’s rules committee, called Story’s order “particularly noteworthy” given that it “comes at a time when institutional powerbrokers are meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss the creation of another party should Donald Trump become the GOP nominee.”…

tory’s 80-page order, handed down Thursday, permanently bars Georgia’s secretary of state from making political organizations that want to place candidates on the statewide presidential ballot first collect signatures from 1 percent—or more than 50,000—of the state’s registered voters. Instead, Story set the bar for the 2016 presidential race at just 7,500 signatures.

The judge wrote that the 7,500-signature requirement is an interim measure that will expire when the Georgia General Assembly enacts a permanent—and constitutional—provision.

Richard Winger has the decision.

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