NH SoS doesn't think Bernie is eligible to run
cross-posted in GD
lol. good luck with this, Mr. Gardener. Gardener has been in office for almost 40 years. Oh, and he's a democrat. Seeing as 20 states are like VT and don't register voters by party, it's more than likely that many, many presidential candidates, running as dems and repubs, haven't been registered as one or the other, but Mr. Stickler-for-rules is suddenly throwing this up as a road block. Howard Dean ring a bell, Mr Gardener?
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"If they're going to run in the primary, they have to be a registered member of the party," Gardner told CNN. "Our declaration of candidacy form that they have to fill out says 'I am a registered member of the party.'"
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Gardner, who takes pride in personally greeting all presidential candidates in the fall when they file their paperwork at the State Capitol in downtown Concord, N.H., stopped short of saying Sanders would be excluded from the 2016 Democratic primary ballot. But he said he did not know how Sanders could answer the simple question on the form: Are you a registered Republican or Democrat?
Even if Sanders wanted to formally declare his allegiance to the Democratic Party, which he has not done during a quarter-century in Congress, he would technically be hamstrung. Vermont, his home state, is one of more than 20 across the country that does not register voters by party.
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It's unlikely that any Democratic candidate would challenge Sanders right to run on the party's ticket, Gardner is known to be a stickler for rules. In a telephone interview on Wednesday, he read the form aloud and said he didn't see any wiggle room for presidential candidates who were technically not registered Democrats or Republicans.
But when reminded that Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, qualified for the New Hampshire ballot, even though he was also not a registered Democrat, Gardner paused for several moments. He said he would dig out Dean's paperwork from storage and check.
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http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/30/politics/bernie-sanders-new-hampshire-democrats/
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