Leslie Rutledge
Arkansas Republican attorney general candidate Leslie Rutledge's voter registration status remains up in the air—and that means her candidacy is up in the air, too. The Pulaski County clerk canceled Rutledge's registration after learning that she was registered to vote in Washington, DC, where she had previously lived. Rutledge's questionable registration status is producing
a boatload of uncertainty:
State law requires a candidate be a registered voter of the state at the time of the candidate's affidavit to run for office, which was last March during filing period.
“Whenever a candidate's eligibility is questioned, that's a matter for the courts,” said Secretary of State spokeswoman Laura Labay.
A legal determination may be required to clear up Rutledge's candidacy eligibility.
One argument is that her registration removal means in 2014 she has not been a "qualified elector" - a requirement to be a candidate for office. However, technically Rutledge was just declared a "non-qualified elector" and one can argue that when she filed for office, Pulaski County and the state of Arkansas recognized her as qualified.
Rutledge is insisting that this is all partisan dirty tricks, pointing out that Pulaski County Clerk Larry Crane is a Democrat. According to Crane, though, he was alerted to Rutledge's out-of-state registration by the "Arkansas Libertarian Coalition" and simply acted appropriately on the information.
Unfortunately, Democrats don't seem to be capitalizing on this as well as they should (and if it had been a planned-out Democratic tactic, you'd think they'd be doing a better job on that). Rutledge's opponent should be assuming that she will stay on the ballot, but make hay of this as a potent reminder that Rutledge only moved back to Arkansas after the 2012 elections, having been in Washington, DC, for several years after a weak history as a lawyer in Arkansas. Problems with her voter registration are and should be aggressively framed as part of a pattern of questions about her competence—does Arkansas want an attorney general who doesn't even know her state's voter registration and candidate eligibility laws?
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