Crush Liberalism

Foley’s replacement candidate loses court battle

From al-Reuters:

The candidate replacing Florida’s disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley on the ballot in next month’s election has been barred from posting signs at polling places clarifying that votes for Foley will actually go to him, authorities said on Wednesday.
…
Rules prohibited taking Foley’s name off the ballot so close to the November 7 election. So the Republicans’ replacement candidate, Joe Negron, had asked election supervisors to post signs at the polls telling voters that ballots cast for Foley would elect him instead.

But Florida Circuit Court Judge Janet Ferris ruled against posting the signs outside the nearly 300 precincts in the eight-county congressional district once represented by Foley.

“The problem with posting or delivering such notices at polling places, which would speak only to the District 16 Congressional race, is that the legislature did not authorize them,” Ferris wrote in an order granting the Florida Democratic Party’s request for an injunction blocking the signs.

Democratic party officials had said the notices would amount to a last-minute campaign boost for Negron, a state representative who jumped into the race with less than five weeks to go amid the mushrooming scandal that now threatens Republican control of Congress.

The judge is correct in her ruling. There are elections laws on the books that forbid campaign signs at the polls. If the legislature wanted to pass a law for situations like this, whereby a candidate was on the ballot despite his/her not running, then the legislature is free to do so. It is not up to a judge to legislate this from the bench.

After all, those of us on the right despise leftist judicial activists, correct? Well, we should be just as opposed to a right-wing activist court trying to undermine the legislature. I do not know what Judge Ferris’ political leanings are, and as far as this case goes, I don’t care…she got the ruling 100% correct.

October 19, 2006 - Posted by crushliberalism | Uncategorized