Election official warns Sanders could be disqualified from NH primary if law not changed

[SidDithers]

https://www.wmur.com/article/election-official-warns-sanders-could-be-disqualified-from-nh-primary-if-law-not-changed/26092357

An effort is underway to change New Hampshire law to avoid a predicament that could rock the 2020 presidential election, after an election official cast doubt whether Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders could run as a Democrat.

In 2015, Sanders, long an independent, signed up as a Democrat to run in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. But when he ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate last year in Vermont, he once again rejected the Democratic Party nomination.

"The Ballot Law Commission, interpreting the statute as it currently reads, would be required, because it's our job to apply your laws, to keep him off the ballot," Cook said.

Under state law, Sanders must be a registered member of the Democratic Party to run as a Democrat. In 2016, the Ballot Law Commission rejected a challenge to Sanders' candidacy, but Cook said the commission is unlikely to do so again.

"He did represent to us that in future elections he would run as a Democrat, a statement he made in a press conference after he filed at the Secretary of State's Office," Cook said.

Or, don't change the law, and let the chips fall where they may.

Sid

[leftynyc]

1. Until he shows his taxes

I wont even consider him. WTF is he hiding?

[uponit7771]

5. +1, and someone should bring it up constantly

[oasis]

60. "Taxes? taxes?.....he don't have to show you no stinkin' taxes"

[TexasTowelie]

2. New Hampshire is also considering a bill that would require primary candidates to release

their income tax returns:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10651015

[Tom Rinaldo]

11. I support that n/t

[PunkinPi]

14. Maryland senate passed a bill last year too, but the constitutionality of it is being questioned.

The Maryland Senate approved a bill on Monday that would require candidates on a presidential ticket to release their tax returns in order to get on the state's ballot. If passed, this would be the first such law in the U.S., and would require tax returns going back five years.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/06/591165165/md-senate-passes-bill-requiring-presidential-candidates-to-release-tax-returns

[politicaljunkie41910]

58. What about the States of New York, Florida, and the District of Columbia?

Have those places passed bills requiring candidates to release their tax returns? If not can someone who lives in those states petition their state Senate to get the ball rolling? I'll help collect signatures in either Florida or D.C.

[Cha]

37. Well Good ol New Hampshire!

[NurseJackie]

3. This is not okay.

In 2015, Sanders, long an independent, signed up as a Democrat to run in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. But when he ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate last year in Vermont, he once again rejected the Democratic Party nomination.

This is not okay. This is using the system against itself and many people are in agreement that this tactic is bad-faith dirty politics.

Election official warns Sanders could be disqualified from NH primary

NH absolutely should enforce the law. Leave it as it is. No special treatment for anyone.

[R B Garr]

23. Exactly. This sounds like rigging the system, which is

ironic considering his complaints about rigged systems. That strategy sounds familiar: complain the loudest to take attention away from what you are actually doing...? Rigged systems, indeed.

[hughee99]

4. We are doing this again?

I guess it’s never too early to start the “Sanders isn’t a REAL democrat” talk.

[LexVegas]

6. ...

[Hortensis]

39. :) Sanders is PROUD to not be a Democrat, you guys.

"Real" or any other kind. Not-a-Democrat is a major part of his personal and professional identities.

So he wants the substantial electoral benefits and support the party gives to Democratic candidates. Understandable. But he's only LIKE Democratic candidates in that desire, and he might well take offense at even that being pointed out.

Respect him, accept his choice of identity. I do and wouldn't dream of insulting him by calling him a Democrat.

[TexasTowelie]

7. The article was published yesterday.

It is relevant to bring it into discussion now.

[Wounded Bear]

8. What? We can't discuss the truth?

Sanders is not a registered Democrat. That is a fact. His desire to run as a Democrat is taking advantage of a system that gave him a pass last time around.

I hear choruses of "Won't be fooled again" echoing in my brain.

[BootinUp]

9. Try genuflecting first?

[hughee99]

15. Excuse me? Please point out where I suggested we can't discuss this.

I don’t care if he wants to run or not, but from 2016, it seems like we already settled the question over whether he CAN run as a democrat, and the DNC didn’t seem to do anything since then to address this issue. If they truly felt like this was a problem, it should have been handled already.

[SidDithers]

10. Sanders told NH he was a Democrat to get on the ballot for 2016...

"He did represent to us that in future elections he would run as a Democrat, a statement he made in a press conference after he filed at the Secretary of State's Office,"

Then, in 2018, he told everyone in the world that he's not a Democrat, he's an Independent, when he turned down the Democratic nomination in the US Senate election in VT.

He was not truthful with the NH SoS when he represented that he would run as a Dem in future elections.

Why should NH believe that he's a Democrat is 2020?

Sid

[hughee99]

16. Yes, he did this all a few years ago. The DNC did nothing

To prevent this from happening again since then even though they knew it likely would. Now we have to sit through this same state by state level technicality bullshit again because the problem was ignored.

[dogman]

49. Maybe, maybe not.

I would think the next election he runs for in NH would be as the Democratic nominee for President. We would need more details to know the context of the agreement. I can't register as a Democrat in my state. You pull the ballot you want when you vote.

[honest.abe]

12. He isn't a "REAL Democrat", he's an Independent.

I guess facts don't matter.

[hughee99]

17. Yes, I remember line this from a few years ago.

It caused problems back then and they did nothing about it to prevent it from happening again.

[honest.abe]

18. There would be no problem if Bernie simply remained a Democrat after the elections in 2016.

His bizarre party identification hopping makes him untrustworthy.

[hughee99]

20. If I recall correctly, Bernie never registered as a Dem.

I don’t believe VT has a mechanism to actually register for a party. So he never “officially” registered for the party and they let him run for the Dem nomination anyway. He didn’t win and declared that he was NOT a democrat. The DNC has known this problem was potentially coming again for a few years now. They could have changed the rules requiring someone to be a registered Dem to run. They could have created a system to allow people whose states don’t have a system to declare party affiliation, to do so in a way that meets their criteria. Instead, I suspect they’ll use the same sort of tactics to go after Sanders in 2020 that they used in 2016, and you can argue that many of those did more harm than good, in the end.

[honest.abe]

24. Yeah, I heard that before about Vermont but..

Patrick Leahy seems to have figured out a way to be a REAL Democrat in Vermont. Why cant Bernie do the same?

Also, I thought the DNC implemented some new rules for anyone running for Dem nomination:

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) adopted a new rule on Friday aimed at keeping outsider candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) from trying to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

The new rule, adopted by the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, requires all Democratic presidential candidates to be a member of the Democratic Party, Yahoo News reported.

A presidential candidate running for the Democratic nomination must be a member of the party, accept the Democratic nomination and “run and serve” as a member.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/391459-dnc-panel-adopts-rule-requiring-candidates-to-run-serve-as-a-democrat

[hughee99]

29. Vermont currently has no mechanism to do this.

Either Leahy became a democrat at a time when Vermont still allowed this (in which case Bernie needs a time machine), or Leahy became a Democrat the same way Sanders became an independent... by just declaring it to be so.

As for the story, I’m not sure how I missed this but thanks for pointing it out. Good on the DNC for doing this and I apologize for mistakenly calling them out for not doing it.

The NH state rules are irrelevant, in this case. Bernie can’t run if he’s not a Dem. He can’t run in any state. The specific rule in NH doesn’t matter because the DNC won’t let him run without being a Dem anyway.

[peacefrogman]

19. But he isn't a REAL democrat. He is an Independent. Fact.

[hughee99]

21. Yes, and if we use the same tactics in 2020 to deal with this as we used in 2016,

We’re going to end up with the same problems.

If Bernie could sign a paper to make him “officially a democrat” for the primary, knowing that he could always undo this right after his campaign ends, would you be fine with him running?

[peacefrogman]

22. Sanders said he would stay in the Democratic Party and then twice walked away,

in the last two years. That says something. This state has a law. We should expect our candidates to follow laws and keep to their word.

[hughee99]

25. I agree on that part, but this issue should be addressed by the national party.

Either Sanders is willing to be an actual Democrat, or he is not. Does he just need to sign some paper and it’s all good? Does he have to be in the party for so long before he can run? Does he have to remain in the party for so long after he runs?

The DNC should set the policy about who can run for the nomination, and who is not eligible. They shouldn’t have a situation where a candidate is eligible in one state and not another. This was a completely foreseeable problem that they did nothing to resolve.

[peacefrogman]

26. The law is there. He knows about it now. He should have considered it long before

now. This is on Sanders. He should not be allowed special treatment just cause. 2016 was different and DNC gave Sanders a lot of allowances that should not be in play in 2020.

[hughee99]

30. I agree. I was not aware this passed until a poster above pointed it out.

Bernie isn’t a Dem and the primary is now officially Dems only. Since there doesn’t seem to be any way for him to register as a Dem, he is not, an cannot, be a candidate in the Democratic Primary.

My apologies to the DNC for calling them out for not doing this, when they did address this last summer. This was an appropriate way to handle this issue.

[peacefrogman]

33. Leahy and Dean are registered Democrats and members of the Democratic Party.

2018 Sanders ran as a Democrat for senator then rejected the Democratic Party in Vermont. I am thinking Vermont can run as members of the Democratic Party.

[hughee99]

34. Sanders rejected the Nomination for the Dem party in Vermont.

If he had accepted, would that have made him a democrat automatically? He’d still be the same person he is now. He could even continue to say he’s not a Democrat.

You can run as a Dem in Vermont if you want, but there’s no official sign up sheet to document that you are a member.

[peacefrogman]

36. Didn't he run under the Democratic Party and then when he won, reject the Democratic Party

nomination with 2018 senate run? I think that is how it worked. As a lifetime Democrat that does matter to me. 2016 he said he would join the Democratic Party. He didn't. That isn't the conversation regarding the OP, though. What started this conversation is that Sanders didn't follow the law in 2016, so he should not have to follow the law in 2020. I do not agree with that assessment.

[hughee99]

41. Actually, the law appears to have been somewhat unclear

And they suggested that in NH, they would not rule in his favor as they did in 2016. None of this matters, though, since the DNC passed a rule that seems unambiguous and it applies everywhere, not just in NH (probably to specifically avoid this situation, where someone’s eligibility is determined on a state by state basis). Bernie is out of the DNC primary unless he can somehow figure out a way to register as a Dem and then actually follow through and do it.

I don’t recall Sanders ever saying he was a democrat during the senate primary, though the Dems in VT certainly supported him over a candidate who did call himself a democrat.

[Demit]

31. I don't understand why you think the onus is on the Democratic Party. States control elections.

States run their own elections. States create their own election laws. If a state's election law says a potential candidate has to be a REGISTERED member of a party to be put on the ballot, then a candidate has to register with a party. A party's policy has nothing to do with that.

[hughee99]

32. The person is running for the nomination of the NATIONAL party.

It makes zero sense to have candidates who are eligible in one state and not another. And it apparently isn’t just me that thinks the national party should address this, as the DNC did, in fact, address this specific issue last summer as another poster was kind enough to inform me.

[dogman]

48. You better talk to the Democrats in the Senate about how that works.

https://www.democrats.senate.gov/
https://www.democrats.senate.gov/about-senate-dems/our-caucus

[Cha]

38. It's Never Too Early to Discuss the FACTS. THANK YOU!

[hughee99]

40. Okay, well as I've learned on this thread, the fact is that

If Bernie isn’t a registered Dem, he can’t run for the Dem nomination anywhere. The NH law doesn’t matter since the the new DNC rule prohibits it everywhere.

[GulfCoast66]

47. Maybe because he is no type of democrat...

Real or pretend? Facts are stubborn things.

[TCJ70]

55. Start? It never ended for a certain group around here...

...but labels over policy I suppose.

[Gothmog]

13. I would leave the current law in place

[lark]

27. Don't change the laws, NH. They were put in place for a reason.

Sanders time has passed and he needs to STUFU.

[comradebillyboy]

28. Bummer for Bernie.

[redstatebluegirl]

35. I want his taxes!

I also want any candidate who runs as a Democrat to be a member of the party for at least 1 year before the primary.

[TeamPooka]

42. Imagine if Bernie ran as a Republican and divided their party for a change.

[Hortensis]

45. :) He ran as a progressive populist, so he did in fact

openly compete with Trump for the many voters vulnerable to populist messages. He hoped to bring left and right together in a revolutionary movement. But as it happens, a very significant portion of those drawn to populist messages are naturally oriented to both progressive economic policies that benefit them and socially conservative "culture wars" policy. "Chickens in OUR pots" types.

So Sanders of necessity, like all populist campaigns, whether right, left or centrist, communist, socialist, theocratic, fascist, totalitarian or whatever in ideology, had to somehow appeal to that combination and pull voters away from both Trump and Hillary.

Remember all those white working class males who'd OD'd on too much equality in the Democratic Party? Sanders got some, but Trump's strongly racist/misogynistic version of populism proved more seductive than Sanders' economically heavy version.

Notably, roughly 23-24% of Sanders' voters did not vote Democrat in the GE, 12% to Trump, only 2% not voting, and the other half throwing their votes away to third-party candidates in rejection of the profoundly progressive plans of the Democratic Party. Very revealing. Hostility trumped even the promise of chicken every day.

"As FiveThirtyEight noted, Hillary Clinton was winning states that closely resembled the Democratic Party. In short, she was winning more diverse states, regardless of geographic location whereas Bernie Sanders’ support was seemingly limited to whiter states that more often than not took part in the caucus process."



Well, yes. So was Trump's, although his also included southern states Sanders lost to Hillary.

[scarytomcat]

43. or change back to a Democrat

if he wants to run again

[peggysue2]

44. Awwwww

As I have said elsewhere:

This is not 2016.

[Cha]

46. ..

[WeekiWater]

50. There is no ideological void for him to fill. NT

[Squinch]

51. So do I have this right? He switched to being a Democrat, and they bent their law for him

because he said he was going to stay a Democrat going forward, and then as soon as he lost he switched back to being an Independent, and now he's trying to do the same thing again?

Fool me once, and all that.

[JCanete]

53. how could they formally, legally, demand that he stay a democrat? What would they even need to bend?

He'd be a democrat for the purposes of the primary and the GE.

[Squinch]

56. That isn't the question. The question is why would he say he would stay a Democrat

if he had no intention of doing that?

They would need to bend because that was their law and he made the promise in exchange for them not applying that law to him.

[SidDithers]

57. Yup...

Why should NH believe him this time?



Sid

[NurseJackie]

59. "Fool me once..."

[leftynyc]

61. They shouldn't

It's that simple.

[JCanete]

52. So he declares as a democrat and joins the party. That solves that problem. Big hurdle there. nt

[ProudLib72]

54. I'm berned out