The Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE) was founded in 1985. It consists of the nation’s nationally-organized minor parties, and other organizations, that wish to work toward easing ballot access barriers for minor party and independent candidates, and also to work against other barriers to free elections. Organizations that join COFOE each send a representative to the COFOE Board meetings, and participate in decisions about how to allocate COFOE’s slender resources. Recently, Unity08 joined the COFOE board. Other COFOE organization-members are the Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Reform Party, the Socialist Party, the Working Families Party, and the Committee for a Unified Independent Party.
Interesting, when I asked via email what their position on Instant Runoff Voting and electoral reform, I kinda got an evasive answer.
What RP faction is represented in COFOE?
The Pennsylvania Reform Party, which is independent of all the factions.
Separate ballot access laws are NOT EQUAL ballot access laws.
See Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954) regarding access to public schools.
Obviously an *equal* nominating petition for ALL candidates for the SAME office in the SAME area will show which candidates have a preliminary showing of voter support.
Much too difficult for the armies of MORON lawyers since 1968 screwing up hundreds of ballot access cases.
GreenCutip #1: When you asked who? Unity08 or COFOE?
The actual name for CUIP is Committee for a Unified Independent Party.
Since the Reform Party of Pennsylvania is now affiliated with the new, national, Independence Party, should not the Independence Party be listed as a board member instead of the Reform Party?
Phil has a good point. However, the Independence Party hasn’t asked to be a member of COFOE yet. And the Pennsylvania Reform Party’s affiliation with the national Independence Party isn’t formalized yet.
REGARDING THE REFORM PARTY
Please note, there are no Reform Party Factions. There was a major Case in Federal Court in June which resulted in a Jury verdict and Order that declared the Tampa Group as unlawful and the Officers elected at the 2005 National Convention to be lawful.
The Tampa Group, not liking the verdict, has attempted to retry the same issue in a County Court in Texas which cannot happen per Collateral Esoppel.
In the meantime 3 State Reform Party Chairmen have filed a RICO Action against the Tampa Group for fraudulent use of the Reform Party name and the Reform Party National Officers are seeking additional federal relief.
This definitely raises my opinion of Unity08.
Regarding the Reform Party, the Florida federal case and the Texas state case are not on the same issue. The Florida federal case involved the legitimacy of the most recent national convention; the Texas case involves the legitimacy of the national convention prior to the last convention.
GreenCutip said, “Interesting, when I asked via email what their position on Instant Runoff Voting and electoral reform, I kinda got an evasive answer.”
The answer that you received more than likely went like this, “Unity08 will not develop a platform in the traditional sense, but something far more powerful. We are putting the tools in your hands to decide what issues and questions are important, then making sure that you get answers from the candidates. Based on their answers, you will select a candidate team by way of a nominating vote. The team that wins the nomination will see national office via the Unity Ticket.”
You see, it isn’t up to those facilitating the movement to determine what Unity08’s stance is on this or that. It is our job to provide the tools for you, the member, to decide what issues are crucial and what questions to ask of the candidate teams that are seeking our nomination. There is a place called “common ground” that you will have to find with the platforms that those multi-party candidate teams will bring to the movement.
The two major parties are not going to see the error of their ways and repent of their attempts to deprive Americans who do not belong to their corrupt organizations of their rights. They are going see the error of their ways and attempt to use every unfair advantage, every dishonest practice, every untruth, and every clever tactic to try to keep themselves in the positions they now occupy.
Republicans and Democrats are like Nazi Party members in one way. If you take them as individuals, they can have good qualities and redeeming attributes, but if you put them all together, they are experts at oppression.
Party politicians are not going to work with independent voters to restore rights to them after taking them away for 200 years. Independent voters will have to start registering as candidates with state governments, regardless of what kind of ballot access they have, in order to change government in this country. Saying, We do not run for office because the parties are unfair to us, plays right into the hands of the parties. The parties already know they are unfair.
What independents have to do is register as candidates and then point out the differences between party candidacy and independent candidacy. Without candidates, talking about ballot access is meaningless. Why do you need ballot access if you do not have candidates?
Independent voters should concentrate on two things at the present time, registering as candidates for office and registering voters. In registering voters, independents should not copy the party method of voter registration in which attempts are made to influence the prospective voter to register as a member of some particular faction. The way to be successful at voter registration is to ask the person, How do you want to register?, and register them that way.
We did this in 1986 in Arizona and were so successful that the legislature met and passed a law requiring that deputy registrars be recommended by the chairman of a political party. Accordingly, all independent deputy registrars were sent a letter of dismissal and informed they were no longer eligible to hold that position.
An independent voter filed a lawsuit seeking re-instatement of deputy registrars. To avoid publicity about their dismissal of independent deputy registrars, the legislature met and passed legislation to do away with the position of deputy registrar, making it possible for anyone, including illegal aliens and convicted felons, to register voters.
This enabled them to use the fact that illegal aliens could register voters to require a new voter registration form in 2005 so that they could remove the option to register independent from the voter registration form, decreasing independent voter registration in the state from its highest level at about 80,000 per year to a low of 13,000 per year in 1986. It is at about 40,000 per year at the present time.
Illegal aliens and convicted felons can still go to County Recorders, obtain voter registration forms, and register voters. So could independent voters if they wanted to do something besides whine about how unfair political parties are.
Robert B. Winn