FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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ATLANTA, GA – The Constitution Party of Georgia and the Green Party of Georgia filed a federal lawsuit on Friday attempting to force Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, to list their Presidential candidates on the 2012 ballot. The lawsuit is similar to recent suits that were successful in Ohio and Tennessee. [Click for Lawsuit]

The parties’ Presidential candidates have been listed in more than 40 states during some previous elections but have never appeared on the ballot in Georgia. For Georgia elections the candidate names must be written in on the ballot. Questions have arisen in the past as to whether the state has counted these write-in votes correctly and completely as required.

The parties have historically been unable to gather enough validated petition signatures to be listed on the ballot according to Georgia law. In 1996, nearly 65,000 signatures were collected but ballot access was still denied after the office of the Secretary of State invalidated many of those signatures. In that case, the state contended that a petitioner and a notary must always be different individuals although the petitioning procedures mentioned no such requirement.

Greetings!

The New Year is upon us, most of us have put away the Christmas holiday regalia (as some children plead to keep up the icicle lights for a while longer), and many of you have been inundated by the "election alerts" as the campaign for the Presidency moves to the South. However there is one campaign story developing here in Georgia you probably haven't heard about. I haven't seen anything on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution site. The fact that the GOP-aligned Peach Pundit political blog has nothing on the story is most curious.