The Letter of the Law

Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr won't be sitting in the Oval Office come January.

If it's possible to predict anything in this presidential year, that much is certain — along with the fact that Ralph Nader also will not be the 44th president.

That distinction will belong to either Barack Obama or John McCain.

But the path those men must follow to the White House became a little murkier last week, when Barr filed a lawsuit to keep Obama and McCain off the Texas ballot.

Whatever one may think of Barr's political views, it seems he's got a legitimate legal point. He contends both the Democrats and the Republicans missed the deadline imposed by state law.

"Barr’s calculations were that the candidates would have had to file by Aug. 25," writes Anna Tinsley in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, "before Obama (Aug. 28) and McCain (Sept. 4) had accepted their parties’ nominations."

The secretary of state's office insists that everything was done appropriately.

"On Sept. 3, the secretary of state certified the ballot for the Nov. 4 general election," an office spokesman was quoted in the Star-Telegram. "The certified ballot includes presidential candidates nominated by the Democratic, Republican and Libertarian parties — as well as the declared list of write-in candidates."

It appears that Barr's case is based on a formality: Neither party's ticket had been officially nominated by the deadline.

In order to accomplish that, both parties probably would tell you that they would have had to schedule their conventions to conflict with the Olympics in Beijing in mid-August.

That's not really true.

The only scheduling regulation I'm aware of — whether it's legal or merely customary, I don't know — is that the party in power holds its nominating convention second. Because the Republicans won the White House in the last election, their nominating convention had to come after the Democrats concluded their convention.

While I'm sure that international diplomacy and courtesy were factors, what is more likely, I think, is that the conventions were scheduled with an eye to new campaign finance laws — which permit candidates to spend unlimited amounts of money before the convention, but restrict fundraising afterward for parties to qualify for federal campaign funds.

In the past, the challenging party has held its convention in July, even June. There was nothing (other than the laws that govern campaign financing) that I know of that would have prevented the Democrats from holding their convention in July, leaving the Republicans with ample time to hold their convention before the start of the Olympic Games on August 8.

But if qualifying for federal funds — and not the anticipation of complaints about holding a political convention during a global athletic event that is supposed to transcend politics — led the parties to schedule their conventions as late as they did, too little attention was given to compliance with existing laws.

And, since these conventions are scheduled well ahead of time, it seems to me that it follows that there would have been ample time to amend existing laws — either the federal campaign financing laws or state laws like the one Barr is challenging in Texas — so that such a problem would not occur.

Thus, I am left to conclude that somebody dropped the ball.

Barr is going to get some attention for his cause — but little else — from his legal maneuvering.

Of the two major party candidates, it seems to me that Obama has a modest loophole. Although it's technically true that neither party had nominated its ticket by the Texas deadline, Joe Biden had been named as Obama's presumptive running mate by that time. The ticket had not been formally nominated, but its complete identity was known.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, was not named as McCain's running mate until four days after the deadline. It's hard for the Republicans to argue convincingly that the identity of their ticket was known by Aug. 25 — all that was known at that time was the identity of the presidential nominee.

But it's also hard for me to imagine that Texas, which hasn't voted for a Democrat for president in 32 years, will allow the Republican ticket to be left off the ballot based on that — especially when you consider how crucial Texas is to the Republicans' hopes for victory.

All the statewide office-holders in Texas are Republicans (not to mention the fact that the incumbent president is a Texas Republican). No matter how Barr's court case plays out, I'm sure they'll find a way to keep the McCain-Palin ticket on the November ballot.

In every election scenario I've seen, whether it shows Obama or McCain winning, Texas is in the Republican column. McCain isn't guaranteed a national victory with the support of Texas' electoral votes — but he absolutely cannot win without them.