24 April 2018 — 1552 mdt
Montana’s Green Party and the ballot
At 1330 today, lawyers for the Montana Democratic Party go before Montana District Judge Kathy Seeley to argue that the Green Party should be removed from Montana’s ballots for 2018. I’ve divided this post into three sections:
- The Democrats’ lawsuit.
- How Green has Montana voted?
- Would a Green Party candidate steal Democratic votes?
The lawsuit
Montana’s Democrats claim that Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton, a deeply partisan Republican, wrongly approved 180 signatures on the “Put the Greens on the ballot” petitions submitted by the Green Party and by a Las Vegas, NV, based firm that the Greens say collected signatures without their knowledge. Depending on how the court interprets the law, and addresses the factual issues raised by the challenges, enough signatures could be disallowed that the Green Party is removed from the ballot.
Regardless of how Judge Seeley rules, her decision is likely to be appealed to the Montana Supreme Court. “If the court rules that the Green Party didn’t have enough valid signatures,” wrote Ballot Access News founder and writer, Richard Winger, in a comment on KURL8’s story on the case,
the party will probably then collect more signatures and sue to overturn the March 15 petition deadline. About 60 courts have ruled that early petition deadlines for independent candidates and newly-qualifying parties are unconstitutional. In 2012 a US District Court in Montana struck down the March petition deadline for independent candidates.
It seems to me that even if the MDP wins in Seeley’s court, there’s a good case for keeping the GP on the primary ballot (there are two candidates for the GP nomination for the U.S. Senate) while the issue is under appeal to a higher court.
Because some of the signatures on the GP petitions were collected by an out-of-state firm, readers may want to keep an eye on a case in Colorado where an incumbent congressman was kicked off the ballot because nonresidents of Colorado carried his petitions:
On April 23, the Colorado Supreme Court unanimously removed Congressman Doug Lamborn from the Republican primary ballot. He has been in Congress since the 2006 election and he intends to run for re-election. He was removed because two of his petition circulators were not residents of Colorado when they worked on his petition. The petition requires 1,000 signatures of registered Republicans.
The case is Kuhn v Williams, 2018 CO 30. The decision is 28 pages.
In 2008, the Tenth Circuit ruled in an Oklahoma case that bans on out-of-state circulators are unconstitutional. Yes on Term Limits v Savage, 550 F.3d 1024 (2008). Colorado is in the Tenth Circuit. The Colorado Supreme Court did not mention the Yes on Term Limits decision, and said it is not expressing any opinion on whether the Colorado residency requirement for circulators is constitutional or not.
The MDP and many independent observers believe the Montana Republican Party, or people closely associated with it, may have assisted the effort to obtain signatures to put the GP on the ballot. If so, that maneuver would not be unprecedented. In 2006, Republicans trying to help Sen. Rick Santorum’s re-election bid tried but failed to qualify a GP candidate for the ballot in the belief he would takes votes away from Democrat Bob Casey, who defeated Santorum by double digits.
How Green has Montana voted?
Statewide Green Party candidates were on the Montana ballots for 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2016. Ralph Nader, who ran as a GP candidate for president in 2002, also was on the 2004 and 2008 ballots as an independent candidate for president. Bob Kelleher ran on the Green Party ticket for the U.S. Senate in 2002, and for Montana Governor in 2004. Kelleher’s running mate in 2004 was Colleen Little Thunder, who may not have been eligible to serve as Lt. Governor. Her presence on the ticket helped in Indian Country.
In the dot graph below, I’ve treated Nader as a Green candidate even when running as an independent as that provides the best measure of left of Democrats voting.
Green Party candidates for president did not make the Montana ballot in 1996 (Nader), 2008 (Cynthia McKinney), and 2012 (Jill Stein).
In 2002, Green Party candidates were on the ballot in legislative districts 13 and 14 (Yellowstone County), 32 (Gallatin), and 50 (Cascade). In 2004, Green Party candidates were on the ballot in legislative districts 23 (Cascade), 49 and 56 (Yellowstone), and 50 (Silver Bow). None won. None deprived a Democrat of victory.
Nader’s 2000 run was the zenith of the Green Party’s electoral fortunes in Montana. His 5.9 percent share of the popular vote may have been due in part to a perception that because Al Gore was running well behind George W. Bush, a vote for Nader was a free vote for Democrats seeking to register a protest against Bill Clinton’s hard tack to the right. Here’s Nader’s share of the popular vote as a function of the votes cast in each county.
Although voting for the Green Party’s Jill Stein in 2016 was also a free vote — Hillary Clinton was way behind Donald Trump, with no hope of winning the state — she received only 1.6 percent of the popular vote. Note that the Y-axis begins at 0.1 percent, not at 1.0 percent as in the graph for 2000.
Would a Green Party candidate steal Democratic votes?
That’s the conventional wisdom, just as it’s the conventional wisdom that Libertarians draw votes away from Republican candidates. In the 2000 election, for example, Nader received 97,488 votes in Florida while Bush’s margin over Gore was 537 votes. Had 0.56 percent of Nader’s voters in Florida punched their ballot for Gore, George W. Bush would not have won the presidency.
The conventional wisdom, however, must be tempered with the knowledge that not all, or even most, votes cast for a third party or independent candidate will revert back to one of the major parties if the third party or independent is not on the ballot. In their 2005 paper, The Roots of Third Party Voting: the 2000 Nader Campaign in Historical Perspective, Neal Allen and Brian Brox conclude:
Moving to individual level analysis, we find that third party voting is driven largely by alienation from the major parties and the political system as well as identification with third parties. As a result, we find that Democrats in 2000 were unlikely to defect from Al Gore, suggesting that people who did vote for Nader did so because of their repulsion from the major parties or attraction to Nader and/or the Green Party.
A vote cast for a Green Party candidate is a vote taken away from a Democrat only if voting is a zero-sum game — and the only case zero sum case I can imagine would be an election in which everyone voted, and was required to vote, write-ins were not allowed, and only Democrats and Green were on the ballot. Otherwise, voting is not a zero sum game. Votes for a Green Party candidate can be cast without a single Democrat’s defection from his party’s candidate; votes for a Libertarian can be cast without a single Republican’s defection from his party’s candidate. Keeping Greens or Libertarians off the ballot does not mean their supporters will vote for a major party candidate instead. If a Green Party candidate is not on the ballot, that candidates supports have several options:
- Not voting.
- Voting for the closest ideological match on the ballot.
- Voting for a third party or independent on the ballot.
- Voting for the major opponent of the closest ideological match (example: voting for Bush, not Gore, if Nader is not on the ballot).
- Casting a write-in vote.
Montana’s Democratic Party, haunted by the memory of Nader’s alleged effect on the 2000 election, and happily wedded to the conventional wisdom, fears that Tester, who won by narrow pluralities in 2006 and 2012, will lose liberal votes, and possibly the election, if a Green Party candidate is on the ballot. I can’t, and won’t, say those fears are groundless. But I do think they approach the threshold of panic — and I think the conventional wisdom is wrong.