Jason Bartlett is asking a federal judge for one more shot to get his name on a State Senate primary ballot this year.
Bartlett’s attorney, Alex Taubes, Wednesday filed a motion asking U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall to reconsider a previous decision and order the secretary of the state to accept the petitions Bartlett collected for a place on the Aug. 11 Democratic primary ballot against incumbent New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield.
Bartlett said he collected more than the 1,028 signatures of Democratic voters required to land a spot on the ballot.
But his petitions were rejected because he failed to have the backs notarized by a witness attesting that the circulator indeed collected the signatures, as required by state law.
Bartlett contends in the motion that he made that error because the Secretary of the State’s office offered confusing guidance about emergency Covid-19 rule changes. The Secretary of the State’s office argues that the guidance was clear and Bartlett simply made a mistake. (Read all about that in this previous article.)
Wednesday’s motion seeks to have Hall reconsider a June 8 decision in which she rejected a challenge Taubes filed on Bartlett’s behalf to petitioning rule changes set forth in a gubernatorial executive order. They argued that the rules still made it too hard for a challenger to qualify for the ballot given broader public health restrictions amid the pandemic. Hall disagreed. (Read about that in this previous article.)
Click here to read the full motion.
“Plaintiff Bartlett faced an additional burden of the Ballot Access Laws not contemplated in the original briefing on the Motion for Preliminary Injunction — the guidance provided by the Secretary of the State … was highly confusing, and mislead Plaintiff Bartlett into believing that the witness notarization requirements had been completely suspended for petition pages with written signatures,” Taubes writes in the motion.
“In fact, the witnessing requirements were suspended, but only for petition pages that had only one signature on them. The Secretary of the State failed to explain the discrepancy in the requirements in the directions provided to Plaintiff Bartlett except for with one vague and confusing sentence, which stated, ‘[p]etitions signed by more than one enrolled party member must continue to comply with section 9 – 404b and 9 – 410 of the General Statute, notwithstanding Executive Order No. 7LL.’”
The motion asks Hall to order Secretary of the State Denise Merrill “to accept his petition signatures, which were greater than the number required, and show a significant modicum of voter support.”
Whatever happens with this motion, Bartlett said he intends to petition his way on to the Nov. 3 general election ballot on an independent line, just as Taubes plans to do in challenging incumbent State Sen. Martin Looney.
I am grateful for Taubes standing up for ballot access during this time. I think lots of us can agree that more contested primaries and elections would be good for governance.
I continue to be perplexed at Bartlett's case to the voters. Sen. Winfield is likely to take the lead on police reforms in CT at the special session this summer. My sense is that most of his constituents are happy with his work. Bartlett will have to get more specific than "I will fight harder!" if he is actually serious about flipping voters' loyalties.
I do hope that the Unified People's Party (or something like it) takes off, though. As many commenters said after the weirdness of the mayoral election, New Haven's one-party system (the non-grassroots and non-transparent Working Families Party doesn't count!) leads to all sorts of distortions. It's time we had some meaningful political competition, and this being New Haven, that will come from the Left.