FEC may ask cat, teen to prove presidential qualifications
The Federal Election Commission will now be enforcing a policy to ask people who submit presidential candidate forms to prove they are qualified, or they don’t represent fictional characters or animals.
Last Thursday, the FEC issued a statement that it is setting up a staff working group “to verify information in filings from the 2016 election cycle that appear to be unlawfully false or fictitious.”
The FEC says that it is looking to verify that two official candidate registration forms don’t contain “patently false candidate or treasurer names, questionable contact or bank information, or material that does not relate to campaign finance, such as drawings, essays, and personal court records.”
Specifically, the commission wants to eliminate “filers listing fictional characters, obscene language, sexual references, celebrities (where there is no indication that the named celebrity submitted the filing), animals, or similarly implausible entries as the name or contact information of the candidate or committee.”
According to various media reports, the FEC has seen a big uptick in such filings. We checked the current list of all 1,850 Form 2 filers, and we found candidate names for Rocky Balboa, Moose the Dog, One Cent Piece, Cobra Commander, Anakin Skywalker and The Muslim Dictator Trump (listing Trump Tower as the campaign address).
The popularity of a filing by a candidate called Deez Nutz last year may be one reason for the novel campaign filings. (It was later revealed the candidate filing was made by a 15-year-old boy.)
While this all may sound like a joke gone bad, in a PPP poll last week the fictional candidate Deez Nutz was attracting 3 percent of the general election vote in Texas.
The filings are no laughing matter to the FEC. It has the ability to seek punishment for false filers under 52 U.S.C. Section 30109(a) and 52 U.S.C. Section 30107(a)(9).
Last September, Brad Crate from the Independent Journal Review broke down the possible problems related to false filings during the publicity wave for Deez Nutz, especially if these candidates have received campaign contributions.
“The [campaign] Treasurer who signs a Form 1 (Statement of Organization) or campaign finance report certifies that to the best of his or her knowledge, the report is ‘true, correct, and complete’ subject to the penalties of 52 U.S.C. §30109 including fines and possible imprisonment. Clearly, making up a fake name causes some problems here unless the filer changes his legal name to Deez Nuts and assumes a new identity,” Crate said.
One of the more popular Form 2 candidates is Limberbutt McCubbins, a five-year-old rescue cat from Louisville, Kentucky. McCubbins filed under its (or his) name in May 2015 using an electronic signature on the campaign form. Since then, McCubbins has set up a campaign website and Facebook page, and the cat was profiled by the Today Show, and in the New York Daily News.
And the Pulitzer prize-winning service PolitiFact talked about McCubbins when it tackled the important constitutional question of a cat presidential candidate. PolitiFact turned to election scholar Michael Gilbert and constitutional scholar Sarah Duggin to answer the basic questions.
Gilbert, from the University of Virginia, said that he was “quite sure that any court that considers the matter will interpret the Constitution to require federal officeholders to be human beings."
Duggin, from Catholic University, said the 14th Amendment restricts citizenship to human beings, for starters.
The famous first sentence of the 14th Amendment reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
"I suspect that there might also be a strong case for arguing that cats are aliens, and it's very hard to argue that cats are subject to anyone's jurisdiction -- just kidding," Duggin told PolitiFact.
In an interview with the Today Show, it turned out that three high school students were behind the McCubbins campaign as part of a youth politics club experiment, and they didn’t plan to accept campaign contributions.
Whether McCubbins will get a letter from the FEC remains to be seen. The FEC policy allows the recipient of such a letter to voluntarily withdraw the campaign filing. But the commission also reserves the right to “pursue or refer action for false filing.”