EMAIL DETAILS

As a follow-up to this memo, see the Brookings article below from this
week. I wonder whether a third-party group is allowed to collect signatures
and place a non-FEC-registered candidate on the ballot.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2015/09/08-presidential-filing-deadlines-democrats-kamarck
Will anyone else get into the Democratic race for president?

Part one of the “invisible primary” ended with the end of summer. On the
Republican side the dominant theme was how high Donald Trump could go. On
the Democratic side the dominant theme was whether or not Hillary’s
problems were serious enough to induce someone else into the race. And so
we saw some predictable bubbles; a short one for Secretary of State John
Kerry, the party’s 2004 nominee, a slightly longer one for former Vice
President Al Gore, the party’s 2000 nominee and winner of the popular vote,
and an ongoing one for sitting Vice President Joe Biden, who has run for
president unsuccessfully before but who now has new stature in the party.

As we head into the fall it’s fair to ask—is the Democratic field set? Or
not? On the Republican side it probably is—with seventeen candidates in the
race there aren’t many people who are *not *running for president. But in
spite of all the talk about other candidates on the Democratic side that
field is probably set as well. Putting aside the question of how serious
Hillary’s problems are (I, for one, am not in the “bed-wetter” camp that is
easily panicked) there are serious structural problems that will, very
shortly, keep anyone who is not already in this race from getting in.
Conventional wisdom says a candidate has to get in early in order to raise
money. That’s true for unknowns but any of the nationally recognized
candidates mentioned above could, thanks to the Internet, raise a fair
amount of money pretty quickly. The more serious problem is that
presidential nominees these days get elected in public primaries and public
primaries have filing deadlines.

A candidate who is not on a primary ballot can’t win delegates from that
state – pure and simple. And so missing a filing deadline is akin to
forfeiting delegates to the convention. Candidates who have tried to
convince delegates pledged to other candidates to switch to them (think
Senator Ted Kennedy in 1980) have found it almost impossible to do. And in
recent years almost no one votes for “uncommitted” on primary ballots, so
there are hardly any free agents in modern conventions willing to be wooed
by a late entrant with a great message. In some states the filing deadlines
are pretty simple—sign a paper and write a check. In others a modicum of
organization is required to collect sufficient signatures from voters.
Whatever, the case however, meeting the deadlines requires an organization
in place.

Graph #1 shows filing deadlines along the horizontal axis and number of
delegates potentially forfeited along the vertical axis. (These charts are
based on Democratic primaries but the story is basically the same for the
Republican Party as well. The deadline for New Hampshire has not been set
yet.) By the end of November a candidate who is not in the race and on
ballots has forfeited around 500 votes. By the end of December, a candidate
not on primary ballots has forfeited more than 1000 votes. And so on.

As the next graph indicates, the candidate who has missed filing deadlines
through the end of January, has potentially forefeited 2232 delegates, the
number needed to win the Democratic nomination! Since the all important
early contests, of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina tend to end up
happening in January it will be very difficult for someone sitting in the
wings and waiting for Hillary to crash and burn to get into the race at
that point.

And, as the final graph illustrates, there are very few delegates
apportioned to candidates in contests that do not have filing deadlines.
All primaries and some caucus states have filing deadlines. The few states
that have no filing deadlines are caucus states whose total number of
delegates amounts to less than 500.

Unless Vice President Biden or someone else moves quickly to get into the
Democratic race they will be blocked out. Late entrants can scramble to
raise money and put together a staff, they can afford to miss debates; but
no one can afford to miss filing deadlines.


On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 11:17 PM, Alexander S. Mackler <smacklera@gmail.com>
wrote:

> As requested, please see the attached ballot access memo. I am no expert
> in this area, hopefully this covers the basics (though NY is confusing).
> Please let me know what should be changed and what is missing before it's
> passed along to JRB.
>
> --
>
> Alexander Snyder Mackler
> (302) 598-8678
>


--

Alexander Snyder Mackler
(302) 598-867