ANDY MARTIN /2016
Republican candidate for
President of the United States
“Make America
www.AndyMartin.com
www.FirstRespondersOnline.us
National headquarters:
Tel. (866) 706-2639; Cell (917) 664-9329
Fax (866) 214-3210
E-mail:
Andy@AndyMartinforPresident.com
Blogs:
www.AndyforPresident.blogspot.com
www.AndyforPresident.wordpress.com
Ms. Kristina McNamara
Paralegal
Bernstein Shur
by email: kmcnamara@bernsteinshur.com
Dear Ms. McNamara:
This morning I received your law firm’s response to
challenge to Bernie Sanders.
The Ballot Law Commission hearing is proceeding in a chaotic
and disorganized manner and I am asking for an adjournment so we may have time
to organize a properly-structured hearing.
However, in the absence of any management or leadership by
the chairman, I will try to narrow the issues with your firm based on a very
brief perusal of your document. Your firm’s document is over seventy (70) pages
long and I have not had an opportunity to review it in detail. I do find
several facial defects in the document, and also some unanswered questions.
As someone with over forty (40) years of experience in
election law litigation I am surprised by the lack of professionalism and
proper practice (pre-filing due diligence) manifested in the claims submitted
on behalf of Senator Sanders. I would have expected a better-researched and
more coherent submission on behalf of Sanders given the tens of millions of
dollars at his disposal.
Also, because of the fact that I am preparing to file a
court challenge to the hearing, I would like to make a record that I have made
a good faith effort to narrow the legal and factual disputes before the
Commission, before going to court, particularly since the court challenge will
be filed momentarily.
I would appreciate it if you would turn this memo over to
the attorney handing the file so we can either conference on the phone or
respond to each other in writing.
Without waiving any claims or defenses as to timeliness of
your client’s reply I am willing to accept an amended filing from your office
later today if you care to make the changes I have requested below.
1. Request that you withdraw claim/issue - Secretary
“approval”
You claim the Secretary of State (“Secretary”) has
“approved” Mr. Sanders’ filing. The Secretary in no way, shape or form approves
the factual or legal substance of a candidate filing.
The Secretary merely reviews a candidate’s Declaration of
Candidacy for acceptance and filing. Your apparent claim that the Secretary has
somehow “approved” Sanders’ claim that he is a Democrat is therefore
unprofessional (an effort to falsely attribute action to the Secretary which he
has not taken) and factually and legally erroneous as a matter of New
Hampshire law.
If you refuse to withdraw this claim and refuse to file an
amended objection with that claim about the Secretary being withdrawn, I am
going to have to ask that the Secretary be subpoenaed to testify to falsity of
your argument and to establish that the Secretary has in no way shape or form
“approved” the legal or factual substance of Mr. Sander’s candidacy. The
Secretary has approved the form of Sander’s filing form just as he has done the
same for me.
2. Request that you withdraw claim/issue - Secretary “my
registration”
One of the reasons I have accused your law firm of filing a
sloppy response with the Commission is that I have been a registered voter in
New Hampshire for many years. Last year I was a candidate for the United States
Senate from New Hampshire. Obviously, your firm made no pre-filing inquiry as
to my voter registration and merely submitted my statement of presidential
candidacy advising the Federal Election Commission where to send mail. I
equally obviously do not live in a post office box. Moreover, all of my mail to
the Ballot Law Commission, which has been copied to your law firm, lists a
“national headquarters” in New York .
People do not usually live at a national headquarters.
Above in this letter I accused your law firm of professional
incompetence, probably bordering on malpractice. Your
claim that I am not a registered voter in New Hampshire
is embarrassing to both to your firm and to Sanders. The Declaration of
Candidacy I filed with the Secretary (the same form submitted by Sanders)
identifies my domicile as 144 W. Webster Street ,
Manchester , New Hampshire New
Hampshire without even checking my own Declaration of
Candidacy to see where I declared my domicile, is utterly incompetent and
unprofessional.
If I had made the same mistake your firm would be highly
critical of my professional competence. Attorney due diligence calls for
examining the basic file in a case, not making wild and unsupported accusations
without any research and, without in this case, even looking at my own
Declaration of Candidacy.
I ask that you withdraw your outrageous claim I am not a
voter because it only makes your attorney and your law firm look like bush
league incompetents and jokers; that is not the image genuine Granite Staters
want to project to the world (my family arrived in New Hampshire 100 years
ago). If you refuse to amend your filing to remove your false and fraudulent
claim I will have to subpoena the city clerk from Manchester
to confirm my voter registration.
3. Request that you withdraw claim/issue - Secretary “standing”
Now that we have established that your law firm (and
apparently paralegals as well) did not even check my own Declaration of
Candidacy on file with the Secretary in Concord, we can move to the next
incompetent argument you make, one that is undermined by claims made by one of
parties whose documents you submit.
You claim I do not have standing because I am not a
Democrat. Under New Hampshire law
that is another outrageously incompetent and unprofessional argument.
First, because under New Hampshire
law an unaffiliated voter can choose to vote in either primary, the list of
candidates in one primary can directly affect the voter turnout in the other
party’s primary. This reality has been written about and remarked about in the
media for decades and decades.
Second, I am not aware that in many years of candidate
challenges the New Hampshire Supreme Court has ever claimed that only the voter
of the same party can challenge false filings by a candidate in that party.
Uniform practice in New Hampshire
history shows the contrary. If you have case law to support your claim, please
provide it. Otherwise, as Bernie would say, “Stop with the nonsense!”
Third, and perhaps most embarrassingly for your law firm and
client, the New Hampshire Democratic Party routinely challenges Republicans.
Obviously, the very same people who are participating in and supporting your
client’s sham candidacy in New Hampshire
as a Democrat take a contrary view of the law in their own conduct. Take a look
at the following link and see if I am right:
http://nhdp.org/blog/2014/06/23/nhdp-files-reply-to-walt-havensteins-petition-with-ballot-law-commission-underscoring-unanswered-questions-about-havensteins-eligibility-and-tax-issues/
The New Hampshire Democratic Party challenged a Republican
just two years ago. Were they Republicans? Obviously not. That makes your
contrary argument that only a Democrat can challenge Sanders incompetent and
unprofessional. I therefore urge you to withdraw your unprofessional and
legally humiliating claim that only members of a party (I am a registered
Republican) can challenge filings of their own party with the Secretary, and
file an amended response to my objection. The link above conclusively shows
that your argument is absurd and makes both your law firm and candidate look
desperate for a defense. I urge your law firm not to insult the intelligence of
either the voters of New Hampshire
or the New Hampshire courts.
4. What is the only issue?
I would urge counsel to stipulate with me that the only
issue is whether Sanders is a bona fide Democrat and legally qualified to claim
he is a Democrat when he simultaneously claims to the contrary in his own
official publications. Ironically, that is my
only claim, and that is the
only claim your response did not respond to! Why don't we strip away
all of your distracting nonsense (which is perhaps why you are filing all of
this extraneous drivel in the first place) and cut to the core, so we do not
waste time? I have a legitimate argument and if you respect that fact you will
gain respect from the Commission. If you embarrass the Commission by making
stupid arguments you will only make your law firm look incompetent and
unprofessional and make me look good, which is clearly not your objective.
5. My unopposed motions
I have filed several motions with the Commission, seeking to
recuse the chairman and seeking an adjournment or renewed hearing date for the
grounds stated therein, to the week of November 30th. Although I did not know
your firm was representing Sanders until yesterday, I have been serving the
firm because I erroneously believed a member of the firm was a member of the
Commission, so your firm has had notice of everything I have filed. Most
respectfully I would ask that counsel promptly advise me, so that I can advise
the court, whether your office opposes those motions or not, including the
motion seeking the issuance of a subpoena for your client. If I o not hear from
you promptly, I will also have to move for subpoenas for the Manchester City
Clerk (voter registration) register as well as the Secretary himself (claim of
“approval”).
With counsel’s response to the foregoing inquiries and
requests, we can start to narrow the factual and legal issues and attempt to
conduct a rational proceeding narrowly focused on the single substantial issue,
instead of your firm’s filing a hodgepodge
of ridiculous claims and attempting a scatter shot defense that will
make a hearing unnecessarily long and embarrassing to the state and Commission.
If the Commission will not try to conduct a rational and
properly structured hearing with adequate opportunity to prepare, at least the
lawyers can attempt to do so. I am doing so with this letter.
Please feel free to have counsel call my national toll-free
number that will reach me anywhere in the nation and is forwarded to my cell
phone for immediate response.
Respectfully submitted,
Andy Martin, J.D.
Adjunct Professor of Law
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