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Jerry Trudell of West Charleston will be in Washington Superior Court Thursday morning for the first of two days of his civil challenge of the new Vermont law governing when independent candidates must file petitions to be on the ballot.
The Legislature moved the date from September to June so that all potential candidates filed at the same time. In the past, independents and minor party candidates filed after the party primaries in September.
Christopher Stried is contesting the decision passed down Tuesday from the Tippecanoe County election board to leave his name off the November ballot. Stried, a recent Purdue University graduate, filed paperwork to run as an independent for county clerk. The board voted unanimously Tuesday to deny his petition for ballot placement because of questions over the wrong forms being used and a questionable address Stried listed as his residence.
Independent candidate signatures were due by June 30, and noon Thursday was the deadline for candidates to file a declaration of candidacy following the verification of signatures. Stried submitted more than 1,000 signatures in May, but election officials did not sign off on the paperwork.
Stried accused officials of "baseless nitpicking" and said he's being railroaded.
Kristin Davis, formerly known as the Manhattan Madam who supplied high priced call- girls for Eliot Spitzer when he was Governor and Attorney General announced today that she would run for governor as the candidate of the Anti-Prohibition Party (APP). She had previously considered the Free Libertarian Party and the Reform Party labels but rejected both although neither is recognized in New York State as a party." We need to legalize marijuana, gay marriage and casino gambling by ending the Prohibition on them " said Davis.
Petitioning for our statewide slate starts on Tuesday, July 6 and goes until Friday, August 13. We need to get 30,000 signatures over the course of six weeks in order to succeed in placing the slate, including our gubernatorial candidate, Howie Hawkins, on the ballot – the first step towards getting the 50,000 votes we need in order to get our permanent ballot line back.
We need your help to do this. The load is always lighter when many help carry it – and your 25, 50, 100, 500 signatures collected from friends and community members will help us move that much closer to the ballot line.
You can download the petition from the state web site at or click here. The petitioning guidelines download is here.
It's that time of year when third party and independent candidates must collect signatures to get their names on the ballot. This petitioning exercise is like the primary election for independent candidates, and I encourage all York countians to assist in this process with your signature of approval.
Of special interest this year is Green Party senate candidate Mel Packer. Mel is a physician's assistant working in Pittsburgh and is a person of extraordinary character and conviction. He has been a champion for clean elections financing, universal health care, equal opportunity housing, workers' rights and environmental protection for many decades. For more information see www.melpacker.com.
Regardless of your party affiliation, please sign the petitions and help the more independent-minded candidates add their perspectives to the commonwealth's political process.
Steve Baker
Chairman
Green Party of York County
June 28 was the deadline for objections to be filed against Illinois petitions for the nominees of unqualified parties, and for independent candidates. All of the statewide minor party and independent petitions have been challenged, including the statewide petitions of the Libertarian and Constitution Parties.
The Green Party is not subject to worries about petition challenges, because it is a qualified party and already nominated its candidates in the February 2010 primary. The challenger against the Libertarian and Constitution slates is Sharon Ann Meroni of Barrington Hills. She is also the only person who objected to the independent gubernatorial petition of Scott Lee Cohen. To the extent that Meroni is associated with the Republican Party (which she is), it is puzzling that she also challenged Cohen’s petition, because Cohen is an independent Democrat.
Democratic Party lawyers asked the Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday to keep the Green Party off the ballot, saying its officers knew they were accepting illegal help from Republicans to field candidates. In its argument to the high court, the Democratic Party said an out-of-state corporation with GOP ties bankrolled a petition drive to put the Green Party on the November ballot in violation of state law. Corporations are forbidden from contributing to political parties except to pay for administrative expenses.
The Green Party contends its signature-gathering effort – spearheaded by an out-of-state GOP operative and funded with $532,000 from an undisclosed source – was an administrative expense. Last week, a district judge blocked the Green Party from the fall ballot, and the case was appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.
Maine and several other New England states still require petitioning candidates to submit their completed petitions to various town clerks around the state. Then, after the town clerks have finished checking the petitions, the candidate or political party supporting that candidate must collect the petitions and deliver them to the Secretary of State.
This cumbersome procedure ought to be obsolete in every state, because federal legislation for some years has required each state elections office to have its own list of all registered voters in the state.
This year, in Maine, an independent gubernatorial candidate, Alex Hammer, collected almost 6,000 signatures toward the requirement of 4,000. To save time, money, and energy, he put the petitions he had collected from certain towns on his web page, using high resolution techniques for the scan (300dpi). He then asked these particular town clerks to check the signatures by examining the images.
However, the Secretary of State ruled that this method of delivery is not permitted, so Hammer is off the ballot, even though he is virtually certain to have enough valid signatures. Using the old-fashioned system of delivering signatures in person, he already has been notified that he has 3,200 valid signatures, and there are still 1,400 unchecked signatures. He expects to file a lawsuit to reverse the Secretary of State’s decision.
They need their petitions signed, sealed, and delivered by Monday, but some are facing an uphill battle. Whether it's the Cook County Assessor seat or a run for the governor's office, critics say the people who already have those jobs have an almost insurmountable advantage.
Challengers and independents say no matter how many names they get on their petitions, incumbents have the manpower to try to disqualify them. Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool was a Democrat who broke ranks to challenge his former party's candidate for Cook County Assessor. "This petition process is a built-in protection plan for the incumbent career politican." said Claypool.
"It's the best way for them to keep an independent like myself out of politics. So they create these huge roadblocks, very high petition requirements, all kinds of technical and legal rules to trip you up. And then they line up an army of attorneys at the public trough, some of them double as lobbyists, to try and kick you off the ballot."
A union-backed movement has turned in what it believes are enough signatures for an independent candidate to run in a key North Carolina congressional district. A spokesman for the group North Carolina Families First said it turned in more than 35,000 signatures to county election offices in the 8th District by Thursday's deadline. The final batch was turned in Thursday morning in Charlotte. Elections officials will verify whether the group has collected signatures from nearly 17,000 registered voters so Wendell Fant can run against Democratic Rep. Larry Kissell in November.
The following is an editorial, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Green Party of the United States or Green Party Watch. This week it was revealed that: a) a Republican consultant in Arizona arranged for… b) a non-profit corporation in Missouri to pay $200,000 for… c) a petitioning company “Free & Equal” to collect 92,000 signatures and… d) give them as a gift to the Green Party of Texas to get a slate of candidates on the ballot.
Are Democrats pissed? You betcha. They are suing the Texas Green Party, Free & Equal, and “Take Initiative America” to delay the balloting of Green Party candidates until they can determine the source of the funding, and they are pointing fingers at Texas Governor Rick Perry.
We advocate for greater transparency about who is behind ballot drives, including the recent one in Texas to qualify the Green Party for ballot status. We make clear we have no problem with that status and that this is a view in principle and not rooted in any concerns about the 2010 gov's race. Rather, we use this opportunity to remind readers why disclosure of financial backing of political moves is important - on both sides of the aisle. Rodger writing on behalf of the board.Word has it that the Green party's petition effort was funded, at least in part, by GOP activists from Arizona.
Voters could see a fourth political party on the ballot this November. Supporters of the Constitution Party turned in thousands of signatures Tuesday afternoon in an attempt to get the group's candidates recognized alongside Republican, Democrat and Libertarian candidates in Wyoming's general election.
Three nonparty candidates for Maine governor have met the deadline to qualify for the November ballot . . . Eliot Cutler of Cape Elizabeth, Kevin Scott of Andover and Shawn Moody of Gorham . . . Elections officials rejected [Alex] Hammer's submission, saying he failed to turn in enough signatures. Hammer disputes the state's finding and said he may appeal it.
Come November, it appears there will be at least five candidates for governor on the ballot in Maine. In addition to the two major party candidates that will be chosen in the June 8th primary, three independent candidates have already turned in their qualifying signatures to the Secretary of State's Office. There are seven others who could potentially qualify by June 1. But at least one independent hopeful is embroiled in a dispute with election officials after attempting to submit electronic copies of his petitions to town clerks for verification . . .
But for one independent candidate, the lengthy process of gathering petitions and having them validated by local clerks may run aground. Alex Hammer of Bangor may end up a few hundred votes short if he loses a dispute with Dunlap's office.
"I'm not a lawyer, but it's clear that the Secretary of State's arguments do not add up," Hammer says. He says he has already submitted approximately 3,800 signatures to the Secretary of State that have been approved by local town clerks and election officials.
He has an additional 2,100 signatures that have been submitted to town clerks, although not in the form of original hard copies. Instead, Hammer submitted high-resolution scanned copies, which Dunlap says is not acceptable under current law.
It is fitting that the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah has taken the side of Farley Anderson. He's an independent candidate for governor from Paradise whom the state has kept off the ballot because it will not recognize the electronic signatures he gathered on his filing petition. Anderson will argue before the state Supreme Court next week that this was unconstitutional.
It is a basic civil right for any citizen to run for public office who meets the legal qualifications. As a matter of principle, it is ludicrous for the state to disqualify electronic signatures on candidate filings when Utah allows a person to form a corporation, file income taxes and register to vote, among other things, online.
The Libertarian Party of Nebraska is asking a federal judge to block part of the state’s petition law. The party filed a motion Thursday for an injunction to allow out-of-state residents to collect petition signatures. The party also asked to intervene in a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s petition laws. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in December, claims that parts of Nebraska law place an unconstitutional burden on citizens.
