No Man is Above the Law….Except, Apparently, our Secretary of State

(Chuck Muth) – The judge who threw out our challenge to the Tea Party of Nevada (TPN) for not submitting the required signatures to be considered, you know, an actual political “party” was District Judge James Wilson in Carson City. Judge Wilson said we didn’t file our lawsuit on time.

His decision has been appealed.

Here’s the thing, though. We shouldn’t have had to file a lawsuit at all.

The law says that if TPN doesn’t meet the requirements to be a political party by a June deadline, the Secretary of State shall strike it from the ballot. TPN did not meet the requirements. So Dan Burdish wrote to SoS Ross Miller in June asking him to do his job and strike TPN from the November ballot.

Miller declined….conveniently not telling us he declined until after the supposed deadline for filing a lawsuit.

But if the law says TPN has to do “x” or else the SoS has to do “y” and TPN doesn’t do “x” and the SoS doesn’t do “y,” why are the citizens of Nevada penalized because the SoS refuses to follow the law?

Rather than tossing out our suit over a technicality, the judge should have looked at the law, determined whether or not TPN violated it, and if he agrees that TPN wasn’t eligible for ballot status, order the SoS to simply do his job as mandated by the law.

Citizens shouldn’t have to sue their elected officials, at considerable cost, just to get them to follow the law and do their elected jobs. But when it comes to saving Harry Reid’s bacon at all costs, one of the costs is ignoring the law.