My part is short. I am starting this topic here because I would like to see a thoroughgoing critique of all aspects of the ballot access initiatives of third party candidates. I am particularly concerned about the failures of the Barr campaign and the Libertarian Party to obtain 50 state ballot access.
It seems to me that libertarians knew going in what states were tough. And not enough was done. But I am not the expert. Paulie and his associates are.
There were failures not only in effect, but in practice. I think there was an ethical failure that Angela O’Dell didn’t get paid for her petition work in West Virginia by the Barr campaign.
There were a number of other failures in regard to petition gathering, ballot access project management, and I’d like to look at all of those failures.
Why? If we learn from the past, while it is fresh in our minds, we can plan better for the future. I’d like to see it.
Less
aynrkey
bostonteapartygoer
Kenn Jacobine
mattdharris
Mike Seebeck
Miche
paulie
Jim Davidson
ponggod
Stuart Richards
Todd Andrew Barnett
I’ll add some to your list.
- We had problems in CT because, among other reasons, we failed to photocopy some of the petitions before submitting them. So, when the State lost (into the shredder?) hundreds of our petitions, we couldn’t prove it.
- We started many states much later than we should have. The most egregious example is WV. Bill Redpath, I, and others said it was too late and we would just be wasting money to try. In some very easy states, such as TN, everything was left to the final days and shrouded in secrecy. In TN, we got on the ballot despite ourselves, though in LA procrastination by the (now former) state chair and inattention by the national party staff and the campaign staff resulted in disaster.
- In some cases, experienced, proven petitioners were cast aside to try hiring people through newspaper ads.
- In general, national party staff and campaign staff disregarded the sage advice of experienced ballot access experts like Bill Redpath and Richard Winger.
- Unnecessary problems with substitution resulted from holding the convention late and using an uncooperative substitute candidate. Future nominating conventions should be held earlier.
There were probably other mistakes that haven’t been listed by anyone yet.
[...] by Jim Davidson at Next Free Voice I am starting this topic here because I would like to see a thoroughgoing critique of all aspects [...]
The CT info is very disturbing. Yes, keeping copies seems wise. Good one.
Starting early, good. I note from reviews we’ve performed for BTP that many states have no set starting date. You can start at any time for a party level petition or name a candidate and start on that candidate’s petition at any time in dozens of states. Not sure that’s easy to do, but it is something to ponder.
Proven petitioners are a good idea. Choose the people with experience. I think Paulie can second that emotion.
I’ll go with Richard Winger as a proven, experienced, and thoroughly knowledgeable ballot access consultant.
I’m not sure what you mean about uncooperative substitution candidate. I know that George Phillies was very cooperative, by agreement, in Massachusetts, in petitioning for substitution. Of course, there was no request for him to do so in New Hampshire, and there was no expectation of NH gov’t cooperation in that case. It seems the Barr campaign was able to get on the ballot, anyway, so I’m baffled as to why you would make this comment against George.
Yes, there are a handful of states where we could already start working on 2010 ballot access. It would be cheaper to start now than to leave it to later.
We’re off on a tangent now, but I’m not sure why you would write “Of course, there was no request for him to do so in New Hampshire….” There were many, many requests of Dr. Phillies regarding substitution in NH by many LP leaders including by Richard Winger. In MA, Dr. Phillies was cooperative by most accounts. As for “by agreement”, Dr. Phillies agreed to conduct himself in conformance with LP bylaws by joining the LP. He violated and encouraged others to violate Article 12, Section 1 of that agreement. That “Barr was able to get on the ballot anyway” sidesteps the fact that the resources spent getting the candidate on the ballot in NH due to a lack of cooperation regarding substitution could have been used to get the candidate on the ballot in CT and ME. The silver lining is that the LP may win in the courts a clear right of substitution for future elections.
Yes, there are a handful of states where we could already start working on 2010 ballot access. It would be cheaper to start now than to leave it to later.
If anyone wants to contribute to that, I need to get back to work ASAP. Warm weather states would be much preferred this time of year.
That “Barr was able to get on the ballot anyway” sidesteps the fact that the resources spent getting the candidate on the ballot in NH due to a lack of cooperation regarding substitution could have been used to get the candidate on the ballot in CT and ME
No one realistically expected the NH case to be resolved in Barr’s favor in time for him not to have to petition in NH.
However, other things could have been done about CT and ME…for example, I was a mile and a half from the CT border when Mass ended, and I was encouraged to go to Alabama, which I did. Gary Fincher was in Mass at the same time, very close to Rhode Island (which he ended up working for CP and/or Nader), and not far from Connecticut.
Andy and Mark were in Colorado, but one reason they stayed out there after the convention was that they got jerked around on Pennsylvania. Otherwise they may have headed back east.
Jake Witmer was about to leave for CT after WV but was “fired,” so he went to Alabama instead. All of us except Gary ended up in Alabama. We ended the LP well ahead of time and ended up working on Nader and CP only, and side trips for the Socialists and BTP to Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana.
This was not intelligent resource allocation on the LP’s part (specifically Sean and Scott).
“Warm weather states would be much preferred this time of year.”
Petitioning in the northern states in the winter is generally avoided both because it’s unpleasant for the petitioners and because voters don’t want to stop outside, take their gloves off, and sign a petition in freezing weather. Weather is a major factor in the cost per signature.
My bad, I meant agreement. There was an agreement with Phillies to substitute in Massachusetts, where, by the way, the Secretary of State had explicitly agreed in advance that substitution would be permitted, and then reneged.
There was no agreement with Phillies, nor with the New Hampshire authorities, to substitute in that state.
George makes the point on IPR that there was also no point in the LP suing when they chose to do so – after ballots had been printed and distributed. It was a bone headed move. There are seasons for everything.
The season right now is for getting state legislators to propose changes to the ballot access laws. That’s this month and next month. Much later, and it tends to be the wrong legislative session, or too late to affect the 2010 races. So, let’s get on the ball with that, shall we? (No reason we can’t work together on legislation that hampers us all.)
The season for suing over substitution is before the ballots are printed and distributed, as they were in New Hampshire. I don’t know if anyone has pursued that suit, since it is entirely mooted by the actual election. It does seem like a dues paying member of the LP (which I’m not) would ask why spend money on a suit in NH which could not possibly have succeeded. Nuts.
Kind of like the Barr campaign. A petitioner like Angela O’Dell who did her work in West Virginia and was repeatedly promised to be paid by Shane Cory and others in the Barr campaign, must wonder why there were funds for a $15K air conditioner for an office space that was leased, and funds for $18K of limo rides, and funds for tens of thousands of dollars in political consultants, but she can’t be paid for her work. What a bunch of ass wipes.
No, scratch that. They don’t rate that high. Jac wipes.
Paulie, good points on the tactical implementation stuff. That’s the kind of reflection I wanted to see.
How do we get comment numbers on this site? I like that on IPR, so I can sort what I’m saying each time, by which comment I’m regarding.
Jim Davidson: “There was no agreement with Phillies, nor with the New Hampshire authorities, to substitute in that state.”
Indeed. Dr. Phillies was repeatedly asked by many LP leaders, on the State Chairs’ Discuss List and elsewhere, whether or not he would cooperate in substitution if someone else were to win the nomination in Denver. I’ve worked for two US Senators and his answers were the most weasely statements I’ve ever seen from any politician. For example:
On June 18, 2007, Dr. Phillies posted to the State Chairs’ Discuss List: “There is no credible path that will actually lead to there being two different Libertarian Presidential candidates being on the New Hampshire ballot, or that leads to the candidate chosen in Denver being blocked from ballot access by what the LPNH is doing. I agree you can spin bizarre hypotheticals, but those in my opinion will not come to pass.”
On July 19th, Dr. Phillies posted to the same list: “The New Hampshire acceptance statements cannot be filed until after the National Convention, because they have an acceptance window. It is therefore _impossible_ for _anyone_ to file the paperwork and then lose our national convention, because the two events happen in the opposite order. It can’t be done.
To repeat, I can’t imagine any path that will lead to there being two libertarian Presidential candidates on the New Hampshire ballot. Certainly, there is no path that involves me.
I have already promised repeatedly that if I lose at the convention I am going to work vigorously in support of our next Presidential candidate, no matter which person is nominated, and I intend to keep that promise.”
Indeed, Dr. Phillies filed his acceptance papers with the state of NH after Bob Barr won the nomination in Denver. Clearly, there was a path to there being two libertarian Presidential candidates on the New Hampshire ballot. Clearly, by signing an acceptance of nomination document after Bob Barr was nominated, Dr. Phillies did not keep his promise to work vigorously in support of our Presidential candidate.
Jim Davidson: “George makes the point on IPR that there was also no point in the LP suing when they chose to do so – after ballots had been printed and distributed.”
The point of the lawsuit, as has been repeatedly expounded from the beginning, was to win a clear right of substitution in NH for future elections.
If there is a continuing point to the lawsuit, it might be wise to have someone from the LP’s side of the suit to make the judge aware of the fact that future elections would be affected.
From the materials you quote, it does look like George made some moves here that were not completely kosher. I’ve no idea of the context of any of that material, nor whether it was authored by George, though I suppose it was.
There is certainly evidence that George supported the nominee, Barr, in Massachusetts. Equally, he did not, in New Hampshire. Since Barr was such a worthless specimen, and incompetent in getting on the ballot in a number of other states, I don’t regard it as a big deal. It certainly seems no worse than having Neil Smith and Vin Suprynowicz on the ballot for the LP in Arizona back in 2000.
In the end, it seems to have cost, at most 550-600 votes in New Hampshire which, given what an evil troll Barr is, probably were not available to Barr anyway.
How do we get comment numbers on this site? I like that on IPR, so I can sort what I’m saying each time, by which comment I’m regarding.
I like quoting what you are responding to better, like I am doing in this comment. The whole “@338 thing” forces constant scrolling up and down and breaks up the reading.
Also, it gets screwed up whenever a comments gets caught in the spam filter; when I pull it out that re-numbers everything under it.
Not that I am opposed to having the comments numbered here, but I don’t know how to do it without changing the theme. The theme IPR uses has some things which annoy me more, like the lack of author name when you open a post. If you come in to an IPR post other than from the front page, you can’t see who wrote it.
Maybe there’s a theme out there that has everything I want, but I haven’t found it.
The states where the LP can already start work on 2010 ballot access: AL, AK, AR, IA, ME, MN, NE, NH, NJ, NM, ND, OH, OK, SD, TN, VA, WA, and WV. Given winter weather, AR, NM, TN, and perhaps WA would be good places to start. The states where the LP cannot start yet are: DC, IL, KY, NY, PA, and RI. The LP already has ballot access for 2010 in other states. Source: Richard Winger.
Do you jokers not realize that it was the lawyers, judges , and legislatures who made this problem , and they are too fascist to fix it! They never will.Take, for instance the 6th Circuit En Banc Court of Appeals, they are almost all Democrats, they are in complete disarray and refusae to acknowledge it? They are continuing to make new rules regularly.
New Mexico looks like the best bet. Andy’s been in touch with them and from what they told him, the state officials can hold up the process by several months by waiting to approve the forms for distribution. It will take about $10k if anyone wants to pitch in
http://freedomballotaccess.org, or directly to NMLP if/when we have an agreement in place, or directly to my bank if you trust me and prefer to do that instead.
Tennessee needs a candidate to do the petitions…the full party petition is too much more difficult than the candidate petition (40+ k valid vs. 275 total valid).
We plan on doing Arkansas in conjunction with the Greens, since we got them on in 2006 and 2008, and they expect to need our help again.
Also, see IPR comments
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/11/ballot-access-lessons-learned/
Why, yes, Ralph, the government courts and government legislatures make these problems with ballot access. What do you propose to do about it?
The game is rigged, but if you don’t play, you can’t win.
To my complete surprise, we have won some elections with Boston Tea Party, already. And more to come.
The process of ballot access is unfair and unreasonable. So what? Life is unfair and most people I’ve encountered are somewhere between minimally fair and totally unreasonable.
Yes, in a struggle to change the fundamental nature of the established political order from a fascist system that benefits significant vested economic interests, one cannot expect the government to be of much use. Those who run the state are in bed with those who pay them to run it, generally by way of campaign contributors and lobbying firms.
I don’t expect to change anything through the electoral process. I do expect to get attention for the struggle to change things using the political process. It is important to be perceived to be fighting for freedom, even though we keep losing battles. The struggle is not always to the bigger battalions.
Paulie, we have an existing affiliate in New Mexico, headed by Mike Blessing. I’d be delighted to help get funds together for petition work for BTP in that state this year.
Cool deal. Sooner the bettr. Hopefully the LP will get going at the same time, and ppl signing both will not be an issue, and the SOS won’t hold up the forms. We also have fundraisers ready to go if anyone has lists they can use, for any party. I’ll be in touch with the CP, GP, PFP and SP to see what their status there is.
“on 2008.11.26 at 13.50.48 paulie
New Mexico looks like the best bet. Andy’s been in touch with them and from what they told him, the state officials can hold up the process by several months by waiting to approve the forms for distribution. It will take about $10k if anyone wants to pitch in”
Yes, I’ve spoken to Ron Bjornstad of the New Mexico LP and he wants us to do it. The only hold up right now is the details.
“Tennessee needs a candidate to do the petitions…the full party petition is too much more difficult than the candidate petition (40+ k valid vs. 275 total valid).”
The minor parties in Tennessee have a law suit going to reduce the number of signatures needed to get full party ballot status as a political party. The current number of valid signatures needed for full party status in Tennessee is 41,000 and something, however, it only takes 275 valid signatures to put a candidate for statewide office on the ballot in Tennessee, so given the huge discrepency in the number of signatures for party status vs. the number of signatures for being on the ballot as an independent, all of the minor parties in Tennessee run as independents (as in with no party label). I’ve spoken to Richard Winger about the law suit and he thinks that there is a good chance that the minor parties will win and that the signature requirement for full party status in Tennessee will be reduced, but at this point the case is still pending so we don’t really know what is going to happen. IF the minor parties win and IF the signature requirement for full party status gets reduced to something that is more reasonable, then we could go for full party status in Tennessee for the first time in the history of the Libertarian Party.
“We plan on doing Arkansas in conjunction with the Greens, since we got them on in 2006 and 2008, and they expect to need our help again.”
The Greens may not need to petition in Arkansas because they have a law suit going where if they win the law suit (which Richard Winger thinks they have a good chance at winning) they will not have to petition for the next election. The basis of their law suit is that the Arkansas state government says that in order for a party to obtain ballot status, they have to get at least 3% of the vote in the Governors race or the Presidential race. The Greens got over 3% in several races, including as US Senate race where the Green Party candidate was the only opposition to an incumbent Democrat or Republican and the Green Party candidate recieved like 20% of the vote.
“The process of ballot access is unfair and unreasonable. So what? Life is unfair and most people I’ve encountered are somewhere between minimally fair and totally unreasonable.”
It should be noted that in some states even the Democrats and Republicans have to get signatures for ballot access. While the standards are usually easier for Democrats and Republicans than they are for minor parties and independents, in a few places they are just as difficult, and in some places, even more difficult.
For instance, I’ve worked LP ballot access in Pennsylvania and I worked on the ballot access drive to get Ron Paul and his delegates on the ballot in the Republican primaries. The petitioning to get into the Democrat and Republican primaries in Pennsylvania is done during a 3 week period in late January-mid February. Only a registered Democrat can sign to put a Democrat in the primaries and only a registered Republican can sign to put a Republican in the primaries, so this disqualifies a lot of potential signers, which means that often times the best way to get the signatures is going door-to-door (which is also the slowest way to get sigantures). It gets pretty damn cold in Pennsylvania in January and February, plus factor in that most people aren’t home during the day Monday-Friday and that it gets dark early during that time of year. So imagine going door-to-door, often times in the dark, in cold weather, and then factor in that you’ve only got 3 weeks to get the required number of valid signatures. The “big boy” candidates like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney have somewhat of an easier time getting their signatures because they can get them through the “good ole boy” Republican network, but it is a lot more difficult for an outsider/maverik candidate like Ron Paul to get his signatures (but through a lot of hard work, we did it).
The minor party and independent candidates in Pennsylvania have to get a higher number of signtures, but they have from mid February until August 1st to get the signatures (so they can do a lot of their petitioning in nice weather), and anyone who is a registered voter may sign their petitions.
So in other words we want to wait on Tennessee and Arkansas to see how the lawsuits come out, etc.
I’m not sure exactly why Barr was not a registered write-in candidate here in WV. If anyone knows how that ball got dropped despite not making our (somewhat harsh, given the size of the state and the distribution of population centers) petition thresholds, I’d like to know just so that I can consider the reasons for future endeavors by our state party here. I’ve heard it was an accident or a mistake, but haven’t gotten any details.
- Matt
“on 2008.11.28 at 22.24.07 mattdharris
I’m not sure exactly why Barr was not a registered write-in candidate here in WV. If anyone knows how that ball got dropped despite not making our (somewhat harsh, given the size of the state and the distribution of population centers) petition thresholds, I’d like to know just so that I can consider the reasons for future endeavors by our state party here. I’ve heard it was an accident or a mistake, but haven’t gotten any details.
- Matt”
Barr COULD HAVE made it on the ballot had the people in charge of the petition drive not completely mismanged it.
“We started many states much later than we should have. The most egregious example is WV. Bill Redpath, I, and others said it was too late and we would just be wasting money to try.”
West Virginia was started late, however, the resources and manpower necessary to make it on the ballot in West Virginia were available. The REAL reason that the petition drive to put Barr on the ballot in West Virginia failed was due to GROSS mismanagement.
So Andy, you seem to know something about what went down in WV. As state chair, I can honestly say that I don’t. Jake Witmer was the only person who contacted me in anything even approaching an official capacity, and I offered him as much help as our small party could muster. Even more so than the whole deal with being on the ballot through signatures, though, I’m wondering why Barr never registered as a write-in. No signatures required, but you don’t get on the ballot. Your write-in votes, however, are counted, whereas candidates who do not register as a write-in are not counted.
Write-in votes for Bob Barr in WV were not counted because of this.
Here’s what I’d like to do in 2010 and 2012:
1> Hire good folks under the auspices of the state party, under the direct control of the state party, with the state party taking responsibility for getting people paid. I do ensure that my party pays its debts in a timely manner, and in fact, the only debt which the party has ever incurred at my direction, we paid the same day.
2> Augment those folks with volunteers, under their experienced direction. Bring out as many volunteers as possible and get them trained as best as possible by the pros. I don’t believe any volunteers were used by the Barr campaign here. None of my party members reported to me having been approached by the Barr campaign about volunteering to get petitions signed.
3> Run a competent, credible gubernatorial candidate with a well-managed campaign in 2012 and maintain ballot access into the future. Never have to petition again.
4> Petition in 2010 to get as many local candidates on the ballot as will run. Since the threshold for petition signatures here is based upon the number of voters in the immediately-previous race for a given office, this will be a very low burden and will require minimal investment.
I gather that Angela O’Dell, the chair of LP in Oklahoma lately, was hired by the Barr campaign to collect petition signatures in West Virginia. She did the work, but was never paid. Now the Barr campaign claims to be in debt. I wonder if they are even counting the thousands of dollars they owe her. Sort of an embarrassment for libertarians to have these sort of things happen.
I’ve heard that part, I just wonder how things failed. I’d like to absorb the knowledge and learn from their mistakes, since I intend to attain ballot access in 2010 and 2012 as my party is slowly growing and should be strong enough to achieve those goals at that point.
However, I would not say that it’s an embarassment for all libertarians, as the Barr campaign certainly did not speak for or represent all libertarians.
I would argue that libertarians can be embarrassed by the LP even if they are not members of that party. Certainly LP members can be embarrassed by the party’s presidential nominee even if they did not vote for him.
Mismanagement seems to be the common theme in all the states where the LP failed to get ballot access. I think the O’Dell non-payment malfeasance is a symptom of this overall mismanagement, or incompetence. Though I am calling it malfeasance because I suspect it was intentional. I think Shane Cory, in his arrogance, thought he could screw over O’Dell.
It is sort of funny, on IPR I was just going over a long list of ways in which the Barr campaign was not consistent with the LP platform. And yet we continue to hear how great he was as a candidate.
“mattdharris
So Andy, you seem to know something about what went down in WV. As state chair, I can honestly say that I don’t. Jake Witmer was the only person who contacted me in anything even approaching an official capacity, and I offered him as much help as our small party could muster.”
In addition to the fact that I have over 8 years of expierence in ballot access petitioning and have worked on petition drives in 24 states plus Washington DC, I am well aware of what went on in West Virginia and why that petition drive (as well as others this year) failed.
I’ve known Jake Witmer for over 4 years and I’ve worked with him a few times. He called me up right before he left for West Virginia and he asked me if I would come to West Virginia with him. I turned it , down. One of the reasons that I turned it down was because I knew that Shane Cory was going to be running it and from my previous dealings with Shane Cory I knew that he is a difficult person with whom to get along. I also predicted that the drive would fail unless it was run right (as in by competent, reasonable, professional people who are expierenced in ballot access), and given what I knew about Shane Cory’s attitude, I did not see this happening.
Here is a list of things that went wrong…
1) Ballot access drives in other states went on longer than they should have prior to the West Virginia drive starting and could have been finished earlier if not for games that were being played by Sean Haugh. This tied up manpower and resources in other states.
Another game that Haugh played was that he tried to nickle and dime myself and a guy named Mark out of money in Pennsylvania, even though we were bringing in a lot of high validity signatures (mostly out of Central PA). Even after Bill Redpath had agreed that we should be paid a certain rate (which was the rate I had originally agreed to work for) Sean Haugh continued to try to lower our pay (after the fact). Due to Haugh trying to screw us over, we quit the LP drive in Pennsylvania and went to Colorado to work on ballot initiatives. I later found out that the mercenary petitioners that Haugh had hired in Philadelphia got paid at a higher rate (higher that what even Bill Redpath said that Mark and I should get) and according to a source in the Pennsylvania LP who checked the signatures, turned in bad validity (note that Pennsylvania is a challenge state which means that the state election office does not check the validity of the signatures unless somebody challenges them, so when you turn in bad validity there you can get away for it if nobody challenges the validity of the signatures, however, if somebody challenges them then you are shit out of luck – just ask the Green Party from 2006 and Ralph Nader from 2004). We finally did get paid for the work we did in Pennsylvania, but it was only after a lot of grief where I had to get Bill Redpath to intervene due to Haugh trying to rip us off. Even then, it still took over a month for us to get the money (note that we were told that we’d recieve it in 2-3 days).
Given the fact that we got jerked around in Pennsylvania by Sean Haugh, I wasn’t too eager to run into West Virginia to help save the day, especially considering that I knew that Shane Cory was going to be running the show there.
My brother ended up doing some petitioning work this year, but after the way that we got treated by Haugh in Pennsylvania, I advised my brother to not work on any LP ballot access, so he worked on ballot access for and independent candidate and for the Constitution Party and the Green Party instead.
If we hadn’t been treated like dirt, Marky, my brother, and I could have all worked in West Virginia.
If Haugh hadn’t caused some ballot access drives to drag on longer than necessary prior to this, other petitioners would have been available to go into West Virginia.
2) The West Viriginia drive could have been started earlier. Even if they didn’t have paid people ready to go they could have at least had the petitions ready and distributed to volunteers, and even if the volunteers didn’t produce much it still would have put them ahead of where they were. However, even with the late start they STILL could have made it if other things had been run right.
Jake said that when he arrived in West Virginia that the petitions were not ready to go. This wasted valuable time.
3) Jake had petitioners that he knew in other parts of the country that he wanted to bring into West Virginia, and Shane Cory actually BLOCKED him from doing this. Yes, you read that right. These are people that Jake had worked with before and Jake KNEW that they could produce, but Shane actually prevented Jake from bringing them to West Virginia.
4) Instead of bringing in more expierenced, proven petitioners, Shane Cory wasted donor money and valuable time by running newspaper ads and radio ads to hire local people to work as petitioners. These ads did not produce much fruit as the few locals that they were able to hire did not produce much. The money and time would have been better spent bringing in more expierenced petitioners.
Shane has expressed an attitude that basicallys says that petitioners are pieces of expendable pieces of trash and that he could hire anybody to petition. He even made a statement that he “Could walk into any bar and hire people to petition.”
I happen to know from expierence that it is not that easy to hire petitioners. Petitioning is a job that most people do not want to do. The times that I’ve tried to hire petitioners most of the people turned out to be unreliable and did not work out. It was pure foolishness – especially given the fact that they didn’t have a lot of time left in West Virginia – to try to hire local people instead of bringing in more expierenced petitioners.
5) Prior to the start of the LP ballot access drive in West Virginia, the Constitution Party and the Ralph Nader campaign already had petitioners there working on ballot access. It would have made sense to try to get these petitioners to work on the LP ballot access petition as well. This COULD HAVE been done before the Barr campaign even got there, but that’s another issue. Once the Barr campaign was there, Jake made the suggestion to Shane Cory that they work out a deal with the Nader and Constitution Party petitioners, but Shane did not want to take advantage of this and he wanted the LP petitioners to go at it alone! This was more foolishness. Shane did eventually come to the sensible position on this as he gave in and decided that it was OK to work out deals with the Nader and Constitution Party petitioners, but valuable time was wasted before he came to this realization.
6) Some of the mercenary (as in non-Libertarian) petitioners that they did bring in to West Virginia got bad validity. They were able to get away with getting bad validity because the campaign did not do an effective job checking their signatures. I heard that one of the batches of signatures that got turned into the state came back at like 28% validity.
7) One of the biggest problems in petitioning is getting access to locations where there are people you can ask to sign your petitions. I’ve never worked West Virginia, but I’ve heard that it is difficult to get locations there. If the campaign had been better organized, they could have tried to line up locations for petitioners before they got there, or at the very least, they could have found some locations and suggested them to petitioners. Jake said that he suggested that they ask somebody at the LP National office to get on the phone and call up locations and ask if it was OK to have petitioners there. They did end up taking Jake’s advice on this and apparently Austin Peterson found a K-Mart that said it was OK to have petitioners there, the only thing was that nobody relayed this message back to Jake about the K-Mart that said yes to petitioning and Jake did not get told about it until the end of the campaign which was too late. This lack of communication cost the campaign a lot of signatures.
These are the main reasons that the drive failed.
“Even more so than the whole deal with being on the ballot through signatures, though, I’m wondering why Barr never registered as a write-in. No signatures required, but you don’t get on the ballot. Your write-in votes, however, are counted, whereas candidates who do not register as a write-in are not counted.”
I would imagine that you’ve got to register as a write in candidate by a certain date and they probably failed to do that. Maybe it is because they thought that their law suit was going to win and that they’d be on the West Virginia ballot. I predicted that their law suit would fail, especially given the fact that the Constitution Party and the Ralph Nader campaign succeeded in their petition drives in West Virginia.
“Here’s what I’d like to do in 2010 and 2012:
1> Hire good folks under the auspices of the state party, under the direct control of the state party, with the state party taking responsibility for getting people paid. I do ensure that my party pays its debts in a timely manner, and in fact, the only debt which the party has ever incurred at my direction, we paid the same day.”
If you are serious about getting on the ballot in West Virginia in 2010 and 2012 we should talk about it. How can I get in touch with you off of this forum?
I spoke to Richard Winger about Libertarian Party ballot access in West Virginia for 2010 and 2012 and he seemed to think that 2010 would be skipped and that the party would just go for access their in 2012.
“Jim Davidson
I gather that Angela O’Dell, the chair of LP in Oklahoma lately, was hired by the Barr campaign to collect petition signatures in West Virginia. She did the work, but was never paid. Now the Barr campaign claims to be in debt. I wonder if they are even counting the thousands of dollars they owe her. Sort of an embarrassment for libertarians to have these sort of things happen.”
How much is Angela O’Dell owed? Has the Barr campaign given any explantion as to why they have not paid Angela O’Dell all of the money that she is owed?
Andy, you can email me. My initials (emm dee aych) at lpwv.org.
I’d like to have Paulie here too in 2012, I can definitely show him a good time in Morgantown.
Biggest party city in the eastern half of the country.
Also, as far as 2010 being skipped, that isn’t correct. I’ll be aiming for ballot access for at least a handful of candidates in 2010. Currently, I expect to have one candidate for statehouse, and 2-3 running for municipal (but partisan) offices in 2010. It’s not a huge number, but that is also only what I’ve got on board right now. If I can get 3-5 people running for state house and some more running for county and municipal offices by then, I’ll be very pleased.
2012 is the big date though, since we need our gubernatorial candidate on to attain major party status.
There are a lot of misconceptions about petitioning, and about the facts of the various petitioning problems that the LP has experienced in 2008.
I’ve heard that M Carling is a rational person. If M wants to call me or email me a number where he can be reached, I can answer his questions in a detailed way. I can explain everything in great detail and clarity, and help set up a protocol so that similar mistakes do not happen in the future. I can’t waste time with any more long emails on the subject, though.
Bon Chance, LP.