list of people running for president 2016 write ins

But Williams has researched the issue and found a smattering of state court cases that treat write-in candidates as genuine opposition. Federal and state courts could decide that a write-in challenger running solely to get standing is more like a citizen than an actual competitor. This won’t automatically give him standing. To do so, he has notified nine states of his intention to run as a write-in candidate.

So Williams decided to become a competitor.

In two previous cases from 2008, federal courts recognized the theory of “competitive standing,” the idea that a competitor could be injured by an ineligible candidate siphoning off votes that could come to the plaintiff. Though ordinary citizens generally do not have standing, rival candidates might. Many courts, particularly federal courts, have found that citizens are not sufficiently injured by Cruz appearing on the ballot.Įnter Williams. To have standing to sue, the party bringing the case must have a particular injury that can be remedied by the outcome of the case. One major obstacle to challenging Cruz’s eligibility is that ordinary citizens don’t have standing to bring suit over the issue.

Most of these challenges have gone nowhere. “That probably sounds a little wackier even than running for president.”Īround the country, individual voters have filed complaints with state election officials and lawsuits in federal and state courts to keep Cruz off the presidential ballot. “It’s an impossibility to make someone reborn on American soil when they were born in Canada,” he says. He believes Cruz is attempting to be “born again”-not in a religious way, but by using American citizenship laws to claim natural born status, which he believes the Constitution reserves only for those born on American soil. And he’s decided to prove it the only way he can: by running for president himself.Ĭruz is pulling “a long con” on the American people, says Williams, a law professor at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC. He believes the Canadian-born senator is not a “natural born citizen” and is thus ineligible to be president. Victor Williams has a theory about Ted Cruz.

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List of people running for president 2016 write ins