Once more, with for-profit sample ballots flooding the inner city on the eve of election, the Democratic Party cried “foul” and took what it regarded as the chief offender to court on Thursday..
Jake Brown represented the party, as he had back in February, 2021, when special judge William Acree of Jackson levied a permanent injunction against several balloteers, prohibiting them from insinuating that their published for-profit publications had official connections to the Democratic Party, whether local, state, or federal. Brown was assisted on Thursday by John Marek, a lawyer and former candidate who had been a party to the Democrats’ prior action.
In the earlier legal action, there had been several defendants. This time the plaintiffs named only one, veteran ballot entrepreneur Greg Grant.
And, while Brown acknowledged that the crunch of time and the supposed singularity of Grant’s offenses were factors in limiting the party’s request for a temporary restraining order to Grant’s work, that act of singling-out damaged their hopes for immediate action
After some two hours of testimony from Brown, Marek, and Grant’s lawyer Julian Bolton, the judge — once again Acree — declined to issue a T.R.O., evidently accepting Bolton’s argument that other ballot publishers had also, as Grant had, used variants of the word “Democrat” and “official,” but were omitted from the litigation.
Grant was named in the suit, Brown explained, because his artwork had featured a donkey, generally regarded as a Democratic symbol, along with the word “official,” under the auspices of Grant’s shell company, the “Greater Memphis Democratic Club,” as it was described on the ballot. “We didn’t like some of the other ballots, but his [Grant’s] is the one we’re objecting to,” said Brown.
Bolton was able to show that other, untargeted balloteers also used the word ‘Democratic” and/or “official” on their products.
All of the various entrepreneurs sell spaces on their ballots to candidates, and that’s all the “endorsements” they get on the ballots, along with their mug shots, amounts to.
Thursday’s court session was held in Criminal Court, where special Judge Acree was hearing other cases, and he did set a date in June to arraign Grant on the charge of violating the injunction he issued last year. That would be criminal contempt, and it could involve jail time if Grant is convicted..
Meanwhile,with the May 3rd Democratic primary slated to come and go in in the interim, there is evidently nothing to stop Grant or the other balloteers from continuing to mail out or hand out — and profit from — their versions of a sample ballot.