Battle for the US senate. Repeat of 2000 fiasco? NJ SC to intervene.

[Imran Siddiqui]

That happens when you become a professor .

[Roland]

You didn't get the sarcasm.

[Lincoln]

I think Roland was expressing sarcasm toward my sarcasm

[DinoDoc]

I wonder if this can get anymore stupid.

[Roland]

I'm confident now you're here...

[Lincoln]

I just heard that Attorney General Ashcroft has asked the NJ Supreme Court to explain why they are violating federal law concerning the military ballots...

[Lincoln]

TRENTON, New Jersey (CNN) -- Republican Senate candidate Doug Forrester filed a petition Thursday with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging a lower court decision to allow former Sen. Frank Lautenberg to replace Sen. Robert Torricelli on the New Jersey ballot.

The dispute has drawn national attention because the New Jersey race is one of several close races that could determine who will be in charge of the Senate.

Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Frist -- who delivered the challenge to the Supreme Court on behalf of Forrester and the New Jersey Republican Party -- charged that "what the Democrats have done is clearly illegal." He said New Jersey Democrats intend to "steal an election they could not otherwise win."

The petition asks for a hearing before the full U.S. Supreme Court and a stay of the New Jersey Supreme Court's order. The emergency application for a stay of enforcement went directly to Justice David Souter.

In addition, the Forrester campaign fired off a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft asking him to use his authority under the Voting Rights Act to order the immediate mailing of absentee ballots. That letter was signed six Republican members of Congress.

Those absentee ballots would have Torricelli's name on them.

The Forrester campaign said it would also ask a federal district judge to order the mailing of the absentee ballots.

GOP: Too late to change
Republicans argued that under state law, the name of a replacement candidates must be filed with election officials at least 48 days before the vote. Though Wednesday was the 34th day before the election, New Jersey's high court ruled a unanimously that election statutes should be "liberally construed" to provide "a full and fair ballot choice for the voters of New Jersey."

Forrester's attorney, Bill Baroni, said the Supreme Court appeal would be based on Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives state legislatures the power to decide the "time, place and manner" of elections for federal offices.

"State law, as passed by our state legislature, says 51 days before an election, a candidate for federal office -- a candidate for any office -- can leave the ballot. After 51 days, you can't leave the ballot. Now, the state Supreme Court has overridden the state legislature," Baroni said. "It's not up to the state Supreme Court to overrule the legislature. That's cut and dried."

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Lautenberg could replace Torricelli, who has withdrawn from the Senate race.

If Republicans prevail at the U.S. Supreme Court, Torricelli would appear on the ballot in November, rather than Lautenberg. Baroni said the appeal would cite the 2000 case of Bush vs. Gore, in which the high court overruled a decision by the Florida Supreme Court for a statewide recount of ballots.

Forester argued to Ashcroft that the failure to send out the absentee ballots immediately disenfranchises thousands of people in the military.

The New Jersey Supreme Court ordered elections officials to give precedence to mailing military and overseas ballots.

Torricelli -- trailing Forrester badly amid an ethics scandal that led to an admonishment by the Senate Ethics Committee -- dropped his re-election bid Monday, saying he did not want to be responsible for the Democrats losing control of the Senate.

Normally a Democratic stronghold, New Jersey hasn't elected a GOP senator in 30 years. But Forrester was poised to win against the unpopular incumbent.

Democrats now control the Senate by a single vote, and retaining the New Jersey seat is considered key to keeping power.

Lautenberg, 78, who retired from the Senate just two years ago, was selected by Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevey to replace Torricelli after three other potential candidates, including popular former Sen. Bill Bradley, opted not to enter the race.

[DanS]

This is a dog legally and, if not legally, then politically.

How would you like it if your senator got in by relying on a legal technicality to reduce your choices to none other than himself? Personally, I'd vote Torricelli, if Forrester were successful.

[Ned]

I have two problems with the Court's opinion:

1) It specifically holds that the intent of the law is to preserve the two party system - giving the Democratic Party more rights than other parties. This violates the Equal Protection Clause on its face.

2) This is clearly not an interpretation of the statute involved. It is an "overriding" of the statute by equity based apparently on the state's constitution. This is the same issue that was involved in the Gore case, whether the Supreme Court of a State has that power based on the state's constitution to override an election statute where the US Constitution gives the power to regulate elections to the legislature of a state and not to the state per se. The Supremes avoided the issue in the Gore case. Perhaps the US Supt. Ct. will now decide the issue.

[Imran Siddiqui]

How would you like it if your senator got in by relying on a legal technicality to reduce your choices to none other than himself? Personally, I'd vote Torricelli, if Forrester were successful.

The only reason that there would be that position of lack of choices is because Torricelli knew he was about to lose big, so he wanted to save face.

I'd vote for Jesse Jackson over Torricelli.

[Lincoln]

People can vote for whoever they choose by writing in the name. If people are really outraged because the law is actually enforced then they can stage a write in camaign and vote in whomever they want. There is no death here. No candidate became disabled in anyway. There was no emergency. This is a clear case of someone losing in the opinion polls so he resorts to the power of party influence to change the law in mid stream. This is unconstitutional and federal law clearly spells that out.

[DanS]

"People can vote for whoever they choose by writing in the name. If people are really outraged because the law is actually enforced then they can stage a write in camaign and vote in whomever they want."

Excellent point. I hadn't thought of that. Just this past month in DC they had a democratic party write-in primary for mayor. The circumstances of why they were having the vote like this weren't pretty, but it worked very well. The people were served. No hanging chads.

"There is no death here. No candidate became disabled in anyway. There was no emergency."

Nobody is a harmed party in this instance. Even Forrester was never "harmed", as any candidate will rise or fall on his own merits at the ballot box.

So if nobody will be harmed, wouldn't you agree that a fuller ballot is at least justifiable?

[uh Clem]

Prose can no longer do justice to this situation. We need Amiri Baraka to write a poem about it.

[rah]

My problem with this is the precedence that it sets. Are we going to see a flurry of candidates that fall in the polls drop out so they can try someone else? Constitutionality aside, it just doesn't seem fair.

[Shi Huangdi]

I agree, this isn't fair. You shouldn't be able to suddenly switch candidates because yours is not doing well. Consider what effort Forrester had put into attacking Torriceli has now gone to waste. Especially considering some ballots have already been cast I don't see how you can justify suddenly switching who is on the ballot.