Geoffrey M. Young's Amended Lawsuit Against Alison Lundergan Grimes

COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY

FRANKLIN CIRCUIT COURT

DIVISION I

CIVIL ACTION NO. 14-CI-1508

Geoffrey M. Young PLAINTIFF

vs. AMENDED COMPLAINT RE KRS 118.405

Alison Lundergan Grimes DEFENDANT

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Plaintiff, Geoffrey M. Young, pro se, submits this Amended Complaint and respectfully asks the Court to require Defendant to file a responsive pleading and not another CR 12.02 motion to dismiss.

I. Nature of Action

1. This is a civil action for declaratory and injunctive relief relating to the question of whether the Plaintiff shall be allowed to cast two votes on the same ballot for a candidate who is running for more than one elected office if at least one of the offices is an elected federal office. Current state law specifies that the name of any given candidate shall appear on the ballot but once, with an exception for the filling of a vacancy [KRS 118.405], but Plaintiff holds that Articles I and II of the US Constitution preempt that provision of state law as applied to federal elected offices.

2. This Amended Complaint supersedes and replaces, in its entirety, Plaintiff's original Complaint filed on 12/18/14.

II. The parties

3. Geoffrey M. Young is a citizen of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a registered Democrat, a member of the Kentucky Democratic Party, and a bona fide Democratic candidate for Governor in 2015.

4. Alison Lundergan Grimes is sued in her official capacity as Secretary of State and Chief Election Official of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. She serves as the filing official for all candidates seeking an office to be voted for by the electors of more than one county, members of Congress, members of the General Assembly and of the Court of Justice. She sometimes opines for the benefit of reporters on questions such as whether KRS 118.405 is constitutional and threatens to sue potential candidates who disagree with her, for example, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). Sen. Paul wants to run for re-election to the U.S. Senate and for President in 2016. [Numerous news reports]

III. Jurisdiction and standing

5. Jurisdiction is proper pursuant to KRS 418.040 and Section 112 of the Kentucky Constitution. The controversy is clearly a live one.

6. Plaintiff wants to vote for Rand Paul for re-election to the U.S. Senate and for President on the same Kentucky ballot on November 8, 2016, but KRS 118.405 and Defendant Grimes are preventing him from doing so. These facts establish Plaintiff's standing to sue to resolve the current controversy.

IV. Factual allegations and Constitutional argument

7. The statute that Plaintiff alleges to be unconstitutional reads as follows:

KRS 118.405 Name of candidate to appear on ballot but once -- Exceptions for filling of vacancy.

No candidate's name shall appear on any voting machine or absentee ballot more than once, except that a candidate's name may appear twice if he is a candidate for a primary or a regular election and also a candidate to fill a vacancy in the same office required to be filled at a special election, when the special election to fill a vacancy is scheduled for the regular election day.

8. On March 18, 2014, the Kentucky Senate passed Senate Bill (SB) 205 by a vote of 25 to 13 with a committee substitute. If the bill had also been passed by the House and signed into law by the Governor, it would have removed the prohibition in KRS 118.405 from any candidate for the office of President or Vice President of the United States of America who is also a candidate for another elective office during the same primary or regular election. Pursuant to SB 205, if the candidate were to be elected to the office of President or Vice President of the United States of America, such election would void the candidate's election to any other office and such other office would be treated as vacant. There are other legislative fixes that have been proposed that would accomplish approximately the same objective. SB 205 (2014), however, is not the law in Kentucky, and KRS 118.405 remains in effect as cited above. Given the makeup of the Kentucky House and Senate and the partisan positions that have been staked out by Defendant Grimes and other influential members of Kentucky's Democratic and Republican Parties, it is unlikely that legislation like SB 205 (2014) will pass any time soon; thus the urgent need for this lawsuit.

9. To Plaintiff's knowledge, no legislator even bothered to refile a bill identical or similar to SB 205 in the 2015 short session of the General Assembly. The wall of hostility erected by the Democratic House leadership and Defendant Alison Grimes in 2014 in opposition to SB 205 or anything like it must have convinced the Republican Caucus that amending KRS 118.405 through legislative action wasn't even worth trying again in 2015. Instead, the Rand Paul for President (and Senate) campaign has actively started to explore other, less satisfactory work-arounds such as a 2016 Kentucky GOP Presidential Caucus in Kentucky rather than the normal 2016 Presidential primary. [Numerous news reports] All of this proves not that the controversy is speculative, distant, or hypothetical, but that the controversy couldn't be more live.

10. Citizens of other states currently have the constitutional right to vote for the same candidate for a Federal office and another office using the same ballot. In 2008, Democrat Joe Biden ran for reelection to the US Senate from Delaware and Vice President on the same ballot, and Republican Paul Ryan ran for reelection to the US House of Representatives from Wisconsin as well as Vice President in 2012 on the same ballot. To the extent that KRS 118.405 prevents Plaintiff from exercising the same degree of liberty enjoyed by citizens of other states to prefer the same candidate over all his opponents for two different offices on the same ballot, the statute and Defendant Grimes treat Plaintiff like a second-class American citizen.

11. Candidates who are Kentucky citizens are also being discriminated against by the imposition of additional ballot restrictions beyond those enumerated in Articles I and II of the US Constitution. In 1995, in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, (93-1456), 514 U.S. 779 (1995), the US Supreme Court ruled that states could not restrict federal offices through state constitutions or state statutes. That decision is the law of the land in Kentucky and all other states.

The following key points, delivered by Justice Stevens for the majority, are particularly pertinent to the instant controversy:

a) Such a state imposed restriction is contrary to the "fundamental principle of our representative democracy," embodied in the Constitution, that "the people should choose whom they please to govern them." Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 547 (1969) (internal quotation marks omitted). Allowing individual States to adopt their own qualifications for congressional service would be inconsistent with the Framers' vision of a uniform National Legislature representing the people of the United States. If the qualifications set forth in the text of the Constitution are to be changed, that text must be amended. Id.

b) As this elaborate summary reveals, our historical analysis in Powell was both detailed and persuasive. We thus conclude now, as we did in Powell, that history shows that, with respect to Congress, the Framers intended the Constitution to establish fixed qualifications. Id.

c) Second, we recognized the critical postulate that sovereignty is vested in the people, and that sovereignty confers on the people the right to choose freely their representatives to the National Government. For example, we noted that "Robert Livingston . . . endorsed this same fundamental principle: 'The people are the best judges who ought to represent them. To dictate and control them, to tell them whom they shall not elect, is to abridge their natural rights.' " 395 U.S., at 541, n. 76, quoting 2 Elliot's Debates 292-293. Id.

d) Petitioners argue that the Constitution contains no express prohibition against state added qualifications, and that Amendment 73 is therefore an appropriate exercise of a State's reserved power to place additional restrictions on the choices that its own voters may make. We disagree for two independent reasons. First, we conclude that the power to add qualifications is not within the "original powers" of the States, and thus is not reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment. Second, even if States possessed some original power in this area, we conclude that the Framers intended the Constitution to be the exclusive source of qualifications for members of Congress, and that the Framers thereby "divested" States of any power to add qualifications. Id.

e) We believe that the Constitution reflects the Framers' general agreement with the approach later articulated by Justice Story. For example, Art. I, §5, cl. 1 provides: "Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members." The text of the Constitution thus gives the representatives of all the people the final say in judging the qualifications of the representatives of any one State. Id.

f) In short, as the Framers recognized, electing representatives to the National Legislature was a new right, arising from the Constitution itself. The Tenth Amendment thus provides no basis for concluding that the States possess reserved power to add qualifications to those that are fixed in the Constitution. Instead, any state power to set the qualifications for membership in Congress must derive not from the reserved powers of state sovereignty, but rather from the delegated powers of national sovereignty. In the absence of any constitutional delegation to the States of power to add qualifications to those enumerated in the Constitution, such a power does not exist. Id.

g) The dissent nevertheless contends that the Framers' distrust of the States with respect to elections does not preclude the people of the States from adopting eligibility requirements to help narrow their own choices. See post, at 47-48. As the dissent concedes, post, at 53, however, the Framers were unquestionably concerned that the States would simply not hold elections for federal officers, and therefore the Framers gave Congress the power to "make or alter" state election regulations. Yet under the dissent's approach, the States could achieve exactly the same result by simply setting qualifications for federal office sufficiently high that no one could meet those qualifications. In our view, it is inconceivable that the Framers would provide a specific constitutional provision to ensure that federal elections would be held while at the same time allowing States to render those elections meaningless by simply ensuring that no candidate could be qualified for office. Given the Framers' wariness over the potential for state abuse, we must conclude that the specification of fixed qualifications in the constitutional text was intended to prescribe uniform rules that would preclude modification by either Congress or the States. Id.

h) Similarly, we believe that state imposed qualifications, as much as congressionally imposed qualifications, would undermine the second critical idea recognized in Powell: that an aspect of sovereignty is the right of the people to vote for whom they wish. Id.

i) Permitting individual States to formulate diverse qualifications for their representatives would result in a patchwork of state qualifications, undermining the uniformity and the national character that the Framers envisioned and sought to ensure. Id.

j) Petitioners do, however, contest the Arkansas Supreme Court's conclusion that the Amendment has the same practical effect as an absolute bar. They argue that the possibility of a write in campaign creates a real possibility for victory, especially for an entrenched incumbent. One may reasonably question the merits of that contention. Indeed, we are advised by the state court that there is nothing more than a faint glimmer of possibility that the excluded candidate will win. Our prior cases, too, have suggested that write in candidates have only a slight chance of victory. But even if petitioners are correct that incumbents may occasionally win reelection as write in candidates, there is no denying that the ballot restrictions will make it significantly more difficult for the barred candidate to win the election. In our view, an amendment with the avowed purpose and obvious effect of evading the requirements of the Qualifications Clauses by handicapping a class of candidates cannot stand. To argue otherwise is to suggest that the Framers spent significant time and energy in debating and crafting Clauses that could be easily evaded. More importantly, allowing States to evade the Qualifications Clauses by "dress[ing] eligibility to stand for Congress in ballot access clothing" trivializes the basic principles of our democracy that underlie those Clauses. Petitioners' argument treats the Qualifications Clauses not as the embodiment of a grand principle, but rather as empty formalism. " `It is inconceivable that guaranties embedded in the Constitution of the United States may thus be manipulated out of existence.' "Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 345 (1960), quoting Frost & Frost Trucking Co. v. Railroad Comm'n of California, 271 U.S. 583, 594 (1926). Id.

V. Claims for relief

12. Plaintiff seeks declaratory relief pursuant to KRS 418.040. Plaintiff seeks a judicial determination declaring that to the extent that KRS 118.405 prevents a Kentucky citizen such as Sen. Rand Paul from having his name printed twice on the same ballot for two elected offices, in either a primary or general election, as long as at least one of the offices is a federal elected office, the state statute is unconstitutional.

13. Plaintiff seeks a judicial determination declaring that KRS 118.405 is unconstitutional because it prevents him from voting for Rand Paul for re-election to the U.S. Senate and for President on the same Kentucky ballot on November 8, 2016, and KRS 118.405 and Defendant Grimes are preventing him from doing so. Plaintiff wants to do so because he feels that Rand Paul would make a less terrible President than Hillary Clinton, who is all too likely to be the Democratic Party's nominee for President on that date. Plaintiff feels that as President and Commander-In-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces and CIA, Ms. Clinton would be more likely to commit war crimes overseas than Sen. Paul would be if he were President.

14. Plaintiff seeks injunctive relief to require the Defendant, in her official capacity as Kentucky's chief election officer, to amend the pertinent official state web sites and to publicize widely her intention to allow and enable Kentucky citizens to place their names on the ballot for two elected offices, in the same primary or general election, as long as at least one of the offices is a federal elected office, starting in the year 2016 and extending in effect thereafter.

15. Plaintiff fully expects that if KRS 118.405 is declared unconstitutional in its present form, the logjam in the General Assembly will be broken and the statute will be amended early in 2016 to remove any conflict between state law and the Constitution.

VI. Prayer for relief

16. Plaintiff requests that the court issue an Opinion and Order consistent with Paragraphs 12 to 15 above.

17. Plaintiff has previously filed cases in this district.

18. Plaintiff requests an oral argument even though he is not an attorney.

Respectfully submitted,

Geoffrey M. Young, Plaintiff, pro se

454 Kimberly Place

Lexington, KY 40503

telephone number: (859) 278-4966

email address: energetic@windstream.net

Certificate of Service

I, Geoffrey M. Young, hereby certify that I have mailed a copy of this Amended Complaint to the Clerk of the Franklin County Circuit Court at the following address and to the following parties on this 7th day of March, 2015:

Sally Jump, Clerk

Franklin County Circuit Court

222 St. Clair Street

Frankfort, KY 40601

Lynn Sowards Zellen, Esq.

Office of the Secretary of State
700 Capital Avenue, Suite 152
Frankfort, KY 40601

John W. Hampton

Kentucky Board of Elections

140 Walnut Street
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601

George Russell

Kentucky Board of Elections
140 Walnut Street
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601

Signed,

Geoffrey M. Young, pro se

454 Kimberly Place

Lexington, KY 40503