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By James F. Wolfe
Globe Special Correspondent
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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Martin Lindstedt, Granby, filed a lawsuit Monday as a pauper, seeking to have declared unconstitutional a law cited to keep from him becoming a gubernatorial candidate as a pauper in March.
Lindstedt asked the federal district court here to accept his suit without his paying a $120 filing fee. A clerk said Judge Brook Bartlett will decide, probably within two weeks, whether to grant pauper status.
On March 18, Lindstedt tried to file for the Libertarian nomination for governor without paying a $200 fee, which goes to the party. The secretary of state's office turned him down, saying a statute calls for pauper filings to be accompanied by a petition, in this case with 11,720 signatures.
Lindstedt got on the ballot after he borrowed the money and paid the fee. He and J. Mark Oglesby, a Springfield businessman, seek the nomination.
The Granby man had asked the Libertarian's state committee to arrange for him to get a refund, but it refused. He filed a suit against the party, Secretary of State Rebecca Cook and the state itself, but the Missouri Supreme Court rejected it.
The federal suit is similar. It asks that the state return the $200 to Lindstedt, so he may repay his brother, Mike Lindstedt, Neosho route 5, and a friend in Columbia.
He said the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 1973 case, ruled that "in the absence of reasonable, alternative means of ballot access, a state may not, consistent with constitutional, require from an indigent candidate filing fees he cannot pay."
Collecting more than 11,000 signatures is not a reasonable alternative, Lindstedt contends.
Besides the two $200 loans, he said, he owes his brother $500 and his girlfriend, Roxie Fausnaught, $800.
As to his income, his affidavit said, "plaintiff made $180 for painting a house last November, $160 driving a manure truck for brother, and held a few odd jobs making $40 or less."
He said he has $1,500 equity in the house where he lives and has bank accounts totaling $45. Lindstedt, who publishes a newsletter called the Southwestern Missouri Libertarian, gave his occupations as "writer and laborer."
The Joplin Globe,
Tuesday, July 23, 1996
Page 2C
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