Senator Rand Paul is running for reelection in 2016. Can you believe it? He’s also probably running for president in 2016. That means that Paul will be running for two (2) offices in Kentucky in 2016 — a double-win for America, but also something that he can’t do according to Kentucky state law. Paul’s favored recourse — getting the Kentucky legislature to eliminate a law stating that “no candidate’s name shall appear on any voting machine or absentee ballot more than once” — is all but dead, after the Kentucky GOP’s efforts to take control of the state House fell short on Election Day. Kentucky’s Democratic Speaker has been clear that he has no intention of bringing up a bill to eliminate the law, because he doesn’t like Rand Paul. This doesn’t leave Paul without options. A couple of them are fairly straightforward: he could just not run in the Kentucky presidential primary and cede those delegates. Or the party could move the presidential primary to a caucus in March and keep the Senate primary in May — something that the party could choose to do without the legislature’s approval, the downside being that the party would have to cover the costs of the caucuses.
The bigger problem with either of these options, though, is that they would only solve the primary ballot quandary, not the general election one: if Paul won the GOP presidential nomination, he would have to drop out of the Senate race.
(This) Salon (writer) is on the record hoping that Paul opts for a legal challenge against the state law, for the spectacle of the whole thing. Just imagine Rand Paul and his lawyers arguing that it is unconstitutional to bar Rand Paul from doing whatever he wants. Anyone who knows anything about the Constitution understands that the Founding Fathers wanted Rand Paul to run for as many offices as possible. It’s written in invisible ink on the back of the Constitution, like in the important Nicholas Cage film National Treasure. In his recent interview with Salon, Paul suggested that he’s looking into the constitutional challenge.
Full Article: Rand Paul’s latest ballot option: Dare Alison Lundergan Grimes to defy him! – Salon.com.