BASED ON GEORGIA CODES AND FILING PROCEDURES
by Sharon Rondeau
(Jan. 11, 2012) — The Post & Email had reported on a Georgia citizen’s petition for the seating of a special grand jury to investigate the professional conduct of Secretary of State Brian Kemp in failing to produce materials which would have substantiated placement of Barack Hussein Obama on the 2008 ballot as a constitutionally eligible presidential candidate.
Mr. Millard Blanchard had sent a FOIA request to Kemp on November 28, 2011 requesting the information Kemp utilized to determine that Obama was eligible. After receiving no response, Blanchard sent a letter to Kemp via certified mail in which he said, “Your lack of response implies that you have nothing, which makes it quite clear that Barack Obama was not qualified before placement on the Georgia ballot…”
Georgia law OCGA 21-2-5 states, in part:
(a) Every candidate for federal and state office who is certified by the state executive committee of a political party or who files a notice of candidacy shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.
(b) The Secretary of State upon his or her own motion may challenge the qualifications of any candidate at any time prior to the election of such candidate. Within two weeks after the deadline for qualifying, any elector who is eligible to vote for a candidate may challenge the qualifications of the candidate by filing a written complaint with the Secretary of State giving the reasons why the elector believes the candidate is not qualified to seek and hold the public office for which he or she is offering. Upon his or her own motion or upon a challenge being filed, the Secretary of State shall notify the candidate in writing that his or her qualifications are being challenged and the reasons therefor and shall advise the candidate that he or she is requesting a hearing on the matter before an administrative law judge of the Office of State Administrative Hearings pursuant to Article 2 of Chapter 13 of Title 50 and shall inform the candidate of the date, time, and place of the hearing when such information becomes available. The administrative law judge shall report his or her findings to the Secretary of State.
(c) The Secretary of State shall determine if the candidate is qualified to seek and hold the public office for which such candidate is offering. If the Secretary of State determines that the candidate is not qualified, the Secretary of State shall withhold the name of the candidate from the ballot or strike such candidate’s name from the ballot if the ballots have been printed. If there is insufficient time to strike the candidate’s name or reprint the ballots, a prominent notice shall be placed at each affected polling place advising voters of the disqualification of the candidate and all votes cast for such candidate shall be void and shall not be counted.
An Official Opinion rendered in 2005 by Georgia Attorney Sam Olens specifically addressed a question from the previous Secretary of State about “enforcing the state’s election code,” citing O.C.G.A. § 21 2 50(a):
(4) To certify to the proper superintendent official lists of all the political party candidates who have been certified to the Secretary of State as qualified candidates for the succeeding primary and to certify to the proper superintendent official lists of all the candidates who have filed their notices of candidacy with the Secretary of State, both such certifications to be in substantially the form of the ballots to be used in the primary or election. The Secretary of State shall add to such form the language to be used in submitting any proposed constitutional amendment or other question to be voted upon at such election;
(emphasis ours)
In his opinion, Olens refers to the Secretary of State as a “constitutional officer.”
In October 2008, a qualifications case between a candidate for office and former Secretary of State Karen Handel was addressed by the Georgia Supreme Court, whose decision, based on OCGA 21-2-5(e), “directs the superior court to not substitute its judgment for that of the Secretary of State as to the weight of the evidence on questions of fact.” The court states that it intervenes only if violations of the U.S. Constitution or Georgia law are found; if the decision was “Made upon unlawful procedures;” based on errors, or results from an “abuse of discretion.”
Superior Court Chief Judge David E. Barrett denied Blanchard’s request to convene the special grand jury for several reasons:
Blanchard’s response to the judge’s letter reads as follows:
January 10, 2012
Judge Barrett, by hand carry:
Thank you for your very timely response to my letter of December 29, 2011. I apologize for my failure to read the full content of OCGA 15-12-100. I read only “what I wanted to see” which prevented me from finding the population caveat which in turn prevents us, in this area from seating a special grand jury. My omission is due in part because I generally confine my research to the law of the Constitution and in doing so did not find a population caveat in the 5th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution or any such thing in the Georgia Constitution.
The rest of your response was irrelevant, of course, as it pertained to motions and filings. My correspondence was neither, but instead was simply a constituent asking you to do your job.
However the exercise was not about Obama or ballot challenge, per se. The effort was to finalize three years of testing and searching, culminating in the question: does an American citizen in the 21st century have effective and legal avenues of redress and specifically does a citizen have access to the grand jury? The grand jury of the 5th Amendment was created as the citizens’ legal avenue of redress against government. You affirm and conclude for me that the grand jury has become the opposite, i.e. the grand jury is now an agency of, and for the state.
I was also not aware, of course, that a citizen can no longer approach a judge after the judge is elected. Once a judge is off the stump, the electorate no longer has access to this person whom they have elected to represent them in judicial matters. This you say was created by a federal court rule in 2000. Why this applies to state courts, I don’t know. Judicial chicanery, perhaps? But I do know that rulings do not trump law and the law comes from the Constitution.
Please see my essay, attached and dated December 14, 2011, which came to the conclusions that you have documented in your letter.
Laws have been broken, allegedly, by the Secretary of State and/or his designee in the Georgia elections division. I have one last avenue to go down before I can be satisfied that citizens defending the remnants of the Constitution have no redress of grievances through the judicial, administrative, and legislative branches of government.
Please note that if you feel that you see “sedition” in my comments and must notify the “authorities”; that has already been done. I am meeting with the “authorities” this very Thursday. We meet fairly often to discuss issues surrounding federal intervention in violations of the 4th Amendment, prevention of perceived legal recourse in the 2nd Amendment, para-militarization of civilian law enforcement, but most specifically to discuss progress towards resolution of the abject judicial corruption of the judiciary and grand jury system in east Tennessee.
Are you familiar with what goes on in the judicial “system” in east Tennessee? Do you see a parallel in what goes on there and what is happening in Georgia? Will you consider a return to the law of the Constitution or continue to practice constitutional law and run from the Constitution that you swore an oath before God to defend? Will you turn your back on all those veterans who wrote that blank check to America, payable up to and including their lives, and who also swore that same oath?
For the Republic,
M. J. Blanchard
cc: media
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Editor’s Note: A judge in Fulton County, GA, where judicial corruption has been reported by a citizen for many months, resigned her position as Superior Court Judge in the wake of a criminal prosecution being launched by AG Sam Olens and the Fulton County District Attorney. The former judge is accused of having “locked up criminal defendants indefinitely” and of making false statements, the latter of which is a felony.
In his response to Judge Barrett, Mr. Blanchard referred to “abject judicial corruption” in eastern Tennessee, where judges, prosecutors, sheriffs, deputies, jailers, grand jurors, and court personnel have all been accused of the same crimes and many more.
Blanchard told The Post & Email, “I saw the issue as a means to test our judiciary and grand jury systems from a citizen’s standpoint. Based on our experience in east TN and my recent experience here in GA, I feel quite certain that what I said about the change in control of the grand jury is correct. It has gone from the People to the state.”
I have but ONE, simple question: Just how much more of this “legislation from the Bench, by personal Edict instead of “Strict Juris Prudence Findings” are the Citizens of this Republic going to Tolorate?? How Deep and Implemented is the “Judicial Fraud and Ignorance of the Constitution and Citizens “Standing” that has been Bought and Paid for, and by “WHOM” is going to continue to be UN-Answered??!!”
To answer that with the appropriate action would put one at the top
of their terrorist watch list.