Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Courts » After selection process was ruled unconstitutional, judge added three names to the ballot at the request of rejected candidates. Tom Harvey And Benjamin Wood. The Salt Lake Tribune. Sept. 17, 2014

With at least one candidate still arguing more people should be added to the ballot for state school board seats, the clock appears to have run out.
U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups ruled two weeks ago that the state’s candidate selection process was unconstitutional, and last week he ordered the names of previously-rejected candidates Pat Rusk and Breck England be placed on the ballot.

On Wednesday, Waddoups added Utah County candidate Joel D. Wright, who had petitioned the court.
Joylin Lincoln, another Utah County candidate on the ballot, said Thursday that everyone who had their names rejected for the Nov. 4 election should now be included.
"If the current process for candidate selection is unconstitutional, isn’t it unconstitutional for all candidates," Lincoln, who is running to represent District 9, said in a written statement.
But Mark Thomas, elections director for the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office, said that while state statute sets Friday as the deadline for ballots, the opportunity for additional candidates had effectively passed on Thursday.
"I think the time has expired," he said. "All of the counties have locked down their ballots. Almost all of them, as far as I know, have printed them. Some of them have put them in the mail and some of them will put them in the mail tomorrow."
Wright, an attorney, said he and the other plaintiffs might pursue continued litigation if the Utah Legislature fails to reform the selection process next year. But he has no plans to challenge the election results if he falls short in November, he said.
"The judge has ruled it’s unconstitutional and all the parties, me included, basically agreed once we’re put on the ballot we’re not going to do anything until the next legislative session," Wright said Thursday.
It would be difficult for rejected candidates who did not make it onto the ballet to challenge the outcome, he said. They would have to justify why they delayed petitioning the court to be added, he explained.  Originally about 70 Utahns filed to run for seven seats on the Utah State Board of Education, the 15-member board that oversees the state’s education system.
A committee appointed by the governor narrowed the field to 37, interviewed them and passed on three for each of the open seats. Gov. Gary Herbert picked 14 to appear on the ballot. Waddoups declared that the process violates free speech guarantees of the Constitution.
Waddoups last week ordered England be placed on the ballot in Davis County and Rusk in Salt Lake County. They had sued in federal court after they failed to make the ballot.
Wright had filed a motion on Tuesday asking that his name be placed on the ballot for District 9 in Utah County, the same one in which Lincoln is running.
On Thursday, Lincoln pointed to Wright’s addition, saying she is concerned "that the new process for being placed on the ballot for state school board through the judicial process appears to be a ‘mechanism where a certain class of candidate is excluded from the election process,’" echoing the language of Waddoups’ ruling on the constitutionality of the process.
Wright was represented before Waddoups by members of his firm, Kirton McConkie.
Wright said he agreed with Lincoln that everyone who was rejected should be on the ballot, but he pointed out others too could have petitioned the court after Waddoups’ rulings. Or, he said, the governor could have decided to place them there.
"Basically there is no clear solution," Wright said. "This is a mess."
Alan Smith, one of the attorneys who filed the original lawsuit, declined comment on Lincoln’s call for everyone to be on the ballot.
Wright was one of the candidates approved by the committee but Herbert passed him over for the ballot after an interview.

"I had a very different viewpoint from him on several issues," Wright said after the Wednesday hearing. "That’s the great thing about the judge’s ruling, that you can’t exclude candidates based on their viewpoint under the Constitution."

                                      Joel Wright 

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