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February 28, 2006
I Missed the Qualifying Deadline!!
Relax. I wasn't planning on running for a Hamilton County office. I wrote the title assuming the voice of would-have-been candidate Shirley Deakins, Independent, who planned to run for County Mayor.
According to Ian Berry's article in the new blogs section of tfpONLINE.com, Ms. Deakins claims she was told that, since she was not running in a party's primary, she would have until April 6 to qualify, instead of having to meet the February 16 deadline imposed on the partisans.
This would actually make sense. After all, non-partisan offices, such as General Sessions Judge and School Board, are only on the general election ballot -- and as such will use the April 6 qualifying deadline. By virtue of running as an Independent, Ms. Deakins would also have only appeared on the August general election ballot, so it would seem that she (and others) should also have until April 6 to qualify. The simple interpretation of the election calendar would be that the February deadline is for anyone that will appear in the May primary election, and the April deadline is for anyone whose first ballot appearance will be in August.
I really hope that Ms. Deakins wasn't in any way misinformed by my very erroneous post of February 16, 2006, in which I had originally written that the deadline had passed, but then got to thinking about it, using the above logic, and added a whole lot of boldface, orange baloney. I freely admit my mistake, but at the same time, I seriously question the Election Commission's rules on the matter.
The truth will come out sometime, as to whether Ms. Deakins misunderstood or was misinformed; but the task at hand is to work on changing these rules so that if a candidate will not be in one of these nominating "elections" that the taxpayers so generously underwrite for the duopoly, that candidate should not be held to that pre-election's qualifying deadline. That seems reasonable enough, doesn't it? Especially considering the non-partisan races that are in the same general election? The only thing to think about next is whether or not there should be yet another deadline created, this for the state and federal general elections, that would be for Independent candidates not participating in the August primaries. Again, I think the simple method works: the April deadline should be for candidates appearing in the August election. Set a July-ish deadline for Independents in the November election.
By the way, I'll comment on the new online features at the Times Free Press some other time.
Elections | By joe lance | 04:27 PM