By Richard Winger
Reprinted from Ballot Access News

On August 22, the Democratic Party of Charleston County, South Carolina, asked a federal court to let it intervene in the pending lawsuit South Carolina Green Party v South Carolina State Election Commission. The Democratic Party simultaneously filed a brief, arguing that the Green Party nominee for State House, Eugene Platt, should be kept off the November ballot. The Court is very likely to grant the Democrats the right to intervene.

The issue is whether someone who has already been nominated by a minor party, and who later runs in a major party primary and loses that primary, should be kept off the general election ballot entirely. South Carolina permits fusion. Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “sore loser” laws in 1974, Platt argues he isn’t a “sore loser”. He is an “ambitious winner”, i.e., someone who wins one party’s nomination and then tries for another party’s nomination.

The Democratic Party brief makes much of the fact that in 1976, a federal court in South Carolina kept some United Citizens Party nominees off the general election ballot. But the United Citizens candidates in that case had first lost the Democratic primary, and afterwards had received the United Citizens nominations. Thus, they were “sore losers”.