Voters will not get the chance to consider nonpartisan candidates for governor in the August primary.
The state Office of Elections went to Circuit Court to disqualify the nonpartisan candidates because no nonpartisan candidates ran for lieutenant governor. A state Supreme Court ruling in 1996 held that the state Constitution requires that the lieutenant governor be elected from the same political party as the governor.
Nonpartisan candidates Misty Davis, Khis Dejean Caldwell and Richard Morse were disqualified. Joseph Spatola voluntarily withdrew.
The candidates’ names will still appear on the ballot, but voters will be given a notice about their status.
"So, basically, votes won’t be counted toward them being governor," said Aaron Schulaner, an attorney for the Office of Elections.
Under state law, nonpartisan candidates already face a hurdle to qualify for the general election: Nonpartisan candidates must either receive at least 10 percent of the total votes cast for the office in the primary or receive a vote equal to the lowest vote received by a partisan candidate nominated in the primary.
Spatola complained that state election law unfairly favors the two major political parties.
"We really need to change that stuff, because the way they have these election laws, it’s only going to keep the formal parties in power," he said, describing the process as confusing and biased.
Morse said in a statement to the court that he had been informed by the Office of Elections when he picked up his nomination papers that he would not proceed to the primary ballot without a running mate for lieutenant governor.
Morse wrote that he assumed he would be automatically disqualified after the filing deadline when no nonpartisan candidates ran for lieutenant governor.
"So I was surprised that my name appeared on the roster of gubernatorial candidates, published by the elections office, after that," he wrote the court. "I further assumed that the elections office knew what they (were) doing, so did not interfere with the process."
The state Supreme Court ruling — Hirono v. Peabody — came after Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono, as the state’s chief election officer at the time, objected to George Peabody’s Libertarian Party candidacy for governor in 1994 because no Libertarian had filed to run as lieutenant governor.
