The Democratic Party in the city of St. Louis has sued over the way names will appear on the ballot for a July 1 special aldermanic election.
The city’s Democratic Central Committee filed the suit Wednesday asking a judge to force the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners to include party affiliations. Right now, the five candidates seeking the 8th Ward seat are listed by name only.
Voters in 2020 approved Proposition D, which made the primary and general elections for most city offices nonpartisan. The language says that any “election to fill a vacancy in the offices of Mayor, Comptroller, President of the Board of Aldermen, or Alderman shall be conducted as a non-partisan, top-two runoff election.” However, the city charter says special elections must include partisan candidates where the nomination process by the political parties stands in for a primary.
The Democratic Central Committee nominated Shedrick Kelley at a meeting on May 17. The city Libertarian Party chose Cameron McCarty on May 13. The other three candidates – Jim Dallas, Jami Cox Antwi and Alecia Hoyt – had to collect signatures to get on the ballot as independents.
The suit says the decision to leave party affiliations off the ballot violates the right of the Democratic party apparatus to promote its chosen candidates.
Being the official Democratic nominee has advantages, including access to the party’s proprietary voter data.
Dallas said he was pleased that the Board of Election Commissioners chose to print ballots without partisan labels. Cox Antwi said she believed the ballot should remain the way it is because “we should stand in the way that the voters wanted.”
Cox Antwi, who called herself a lifelong Democrat, added that it has always been the party of democracy.
“If the Democratic committee moves forward with the suit, they will not be living up to that mission,” she said.
Hoyt said she was “disappointed in local Democrats’ attempt to manipulate the election for their preferred candidate by exploiting loopholes in the city charter against the will of the voters.”
McCarty called the suit “the same old infighting that the city has endured for my whole life.”
Elections officials declined to comment.
