Common sense wins this time
deliver them to the election commission office by the deadline. Vanity candidate Kanye West just missed getting on the ballot in Wisconsin because his petition was turned in minutes after the deadline. In the Green Party’s case, the South Carolina motel which was on the signature sheets didn’t match the candidate’s address. The candidates had an opportunity weeks ago to explain the difference to the election commission and possibly get put on the ballot, but instead waited until after the ballots were being printed in order to file suit. Rules exist for reasons and ignoring those rules have consequences.
In the real world, neither of these candidates has any chance of winning the presidential election. As with all the other so-called third party candidates, the most they can hope to do is to siphon off enough protest votes from either of the two major parties to influence the outcome because Wisconsin awards all its electoral votes to the person who has the most votes rather than requiring someone to have a majority.
In seeking to undermine the state election process for political ends, the state supreme court was exercising a particularly pernicious form of judicial advocacy, one that actively seeks to ignore the will of the people or even the rule of law.
Meddling with election demeans the stature of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and weakens respect for it as an impartial arbiter of the law. While the legislature and governor’s office are inherently mired in the political swamp, the Supreme Court should be setting an example and rising above partisan bickering and be independent of the political process. All Wisconsin residents suffer when the court becomes nothing more than a mouthpiece for party politics.
