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| U.S. Supreme Court Intervenes in S.F. Congressional Race, Accepts Appeal by Green Candidate. |
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Terry Baum for Congress 8TH Congressional District September 30, 2004 Contact: Baum Campaign Press Office 415.424-5881 or 916.996-9170 Election shocker: U.S. Supreme Court intervenes in S.F. congressional race, accepts appeal by Green candidate. SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted an 11th hour appeal by Green Party congressional candidate Terry Baum and has ordered San Francisco elections officials to explain why they did not count hundreds of Primary Election write-in votes and place Baum on the November ballot. The decision is a shocker. The U.S. Supreme Court rarely agrees to hear such cases -- it rejects more than 95 percent of the roughly 8,000 cases submitted each year. But, the nation's highest court has now given San Francisco until October 27 to respond to Baum's writ of certiorari filed Sept. 2. If Baum wins, the city may have to reprint hundreds of thousands of ballots to include Baum as a candidate in the 8th District (San Francisco), currently held by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Baum filed a her writ after local and state courts, including the California Supreme Court, turned down requests to count hundreds of write-in votes - with Terry Baum's clearly written on them - from last March's primary. The votes were thrown out by elections officials because of a minor technicality. Baum argues that the ballot instructions for write-in voting in San Francisco were so convoluted that they, in effect, were a "literacy test," which violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act. "The city disregarded most of the election code except for one part that the city used to invalidate hundreds of votes for Terry Baum," said Baum, who is a lesbian playwright in San Francisco and a staunch anti-war and pro-civil rights activist urging the U.S. get out of Iraq immediately. Notice of the court's decision is at
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