Judge Joel Clouser “Allowed” on the Ballot

I heard this via word of mouth last week, but now see that Bev Carter has the story on the Fort Bend Star website.

I like spreading word of mouth stuff around, but do feel more comfortable when I see it printed elsewhere. Comfortable like getting the story right comfortable.

It seems that Tony Sherman, who has filed to oppose Judge Joel Clouser in his bid to be re-elected to his Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace tried to do an end-around earlier this month, and get himself, and himself alone on the primary ballot. Sherman looked at the 747 signatures that Judge Clouser filed in a candidates petition, in lieu of the $1000 filing fee, and called some of them into question to his friend and County Chair of the Fort Bend Democratic Party, Elaine Bishop.

Bishop took Sherman’s suggestion and counted 160 names that lacked a city, state or zip code on the signature line. If included with 144 signatures which were found to be invalid, that would take his total valid signatures from 744 to 440, 60 shy of the 500 minimum required signatures.

If Clouser were excluded from the ballot, Sherman would have found himself elected because a Republican running in Precinct 2 has next to no chance of becoming elected to anything.

An election by County Chair fiat, and at first, that was what was going to happen.

But in the article by Carter, it seems there was a change of heart. It seems that Bishop now feels that it was the voters who should decide who should be elected to the office.

From the Fort Bend Star:

“Bishop said she felt very strongly that the voters should decide, and therefore she and Sherman had come to an agreement to let Clouser’s name remain on the ballot.”

Now you know, that makes absolutely no sense at all. If the minimum number of signatures aren’t collected, the candidate should by all rights be excluded. Take it to the extreme: how many under 500 is permissible then? 60 (as in this case)? 61? 100? 499?

A candidate’s petition is meant to show that a candidate has a voter base and is not just any old nut who wants to run for office for free.

So Bishop’s decision, and the logic and reasoning that went into it, was ludicrous and actually anti-democratic. But that was the reason she gave for including Clouser on the ballot.

But that wasn’t the real reason.

The real reason was two-fold. First, the Supreme Court has already ruled that a candidate’s petition signer does not have to include their City and State information as long as the voter is registered to vote. Something that is easily verified on the voter enrollment records.

That is, quibbling in this way to keep people off the ballot is not the intention of the founding fathers. They wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to run for office.

Second, with that decision as background, keeping Clouser off the ballot would result in a massive lawsuit. A lawsuit that would have exposed the incompetence of the Chair.

The incompetence of a County Chair who by all rights, and by all minimum expectations, should be up to snuff on the latest rules on the requirements of candidates’ petitions signatures.

It also underlines the sheer ignorance of the man who wants to replace Judge Clouser. Sherman claims that Judge Clouser was “skirting the law” in being allowed on the ballot, something that he was going to take to the precinct chairs.

Sherman, on the other hand has been caught red-handed attempting to skirt the election.

Judge Clouser came to the Fort Bend Democrats’ club meeting last weekend and I videoed his remarks. He also attended the Fort Bend County Democratic Party meeting.

Sherman attended neither meeting.

Here is what Judge Clouser said to the Democratic club meeting. I especially like his description of his “Teen Court.”