On Friday, August 15, the Bob Barr campaign attempted to have the Secretary of State authorize local clerks accept late filings of signatures. Don Cookson of the Secretary of State’s office indicated that there is no provision to authorize such a late filing.
The signatures filed by the August 8 deadline amounted to 3,200, short of the 4,000 valid signatures required.
The Libertarian Party is expected to go to court to force the state to accept the late signatures.
This is a major failure. A major screw up. Who was coordinating this disaster? 5 petitioners can easily do this ballot drive in 5 to 7 days, including time to turn in the sigs to the town offices.
You only need 4,000 valid sigs and the clerks will check them as you go.
Barr is looking at being on the ballot in only 45 to 47 states now. It looks like they’ve given up on DC as well. What happened to all of the LP’s hot petitioners? Where are they? Barr should have made 50 counting DC and only missed in Oklahoma. Nader could make 47.
This campaign has turned into a major failure. And just when I was getting ready to make major donations to both the Barr campaign and the LP. Now I’ll have to watch and rethink whether it would be a sound political investment after all. Less than 48 means that I’ll sit out a while longer. Maybe 2012.
Nader has no chance to be on in more than 45.
Maine is not easy. The Constitution Party also failed to qualify this year for president.
Richard,
To put you on the spot, what are you estimated projections for ballot lines for Barr, Nader, Baldwin and McKinney?
Richard,
Maine is easy. I’ve done it. Three times. Never failed. Easy.
I would guess:
Barr: 47,minus DC.
Nader: 44
Baldwin: 40
McKinney: No idea.
The George Phillies fiasco in New Hampshire caused the LP Professional petitioners to arrive in Connecticut late, and as a result of that, to arrive in Maine late, as well.
If the Phillies supporters had assisted the drive in New Hampshire, instead of conducting their own drive to get Phillies on the ballot there, none of this would have ever occured.
I’ll repeat that Maine is not easy. It is one of the few states left in which petitioners must submit petitions to the town clerks, then go back again and collect them and deliver them to the Secretary of State. Maine is one of only 7 states this year with a Democratic-Republican monopoly in the U.S. Senate race (unless the US Supreme Court puts Herb Hoffmann on the ballot).
My guesses for ballot access:
Barr: 47-48
Nader: 45
Baldwin: 39
McKinney: 32
For the Barr/LP team:
51 states (including DC)
less: Oklahoma (never tried / lawsuit victory?)
West Virginia (failed)
Maine (failed)
Massachusetts (did they try independent?)
DC (looks abandoned)
Connecticut (since they failed elsewhere,
this state will likely fall as
well. The Berglandistas did
this way in 84: overestimated
validity and under filed in CT
We’ll see.)
New York (looks iffy)
So, they might make NY. CT, a toss up. 51 – 6 = 45
Total: 45
Worst case: 44
If they get very lucky: 47
Yes, they have a far out, long shot, miracles-do-happen chance for a victory in a lawsuit or two.
I’m crossing my fingers and waiting …
so of the remaining states that LP is still petitioning in, which one(s) may also be in danger of not getting enough signatures, etc.?
The LP didn’t send petitioners into Maine. They paid one shady individual $10,000 to get all the signatures. When he screwed up, they sent people in and got 2,000 more signatures the weekend after the deadline, but it was too late. Clearly the signature gathering doesn’t seem that hard.
Many of your questions about status in various states can be (at least partially) answered by the detailed ballot chart:
http://www.ballot-access.org/ballot-chart.html
And, yes Richard, Maine is still easy.
The town clerks in the big cities will check the sigs DAILY. You can turn them in as you go. You can walk by as you petition, drop them off, and keep collecting. It only takes 5 minutes in convenient cities like Portland, South Portland and Cape Elizabeth and the clerks will sometimes sign your petition. You can know your validity as you go.
My three statewide Maine ballot drives as coordinator had an average Total validity for all petitioners combined of 91%, 88%, and 90%. Individual petitioners ranged from 85% to 93%.
Triage:
1)You need two or three drivers on the final day to deliver sigs to the major towns, before the town filing “deadline”. They do not have to be petitioners. It’s easy to get local LPers to help with driving. You have more time for pickup and don’t need petitioners to do pickup either. They can go on to other places.
2)You mail out the sigs to towns with low numbers and far away. They will be mailed back.
3)You discard the stray sigs. Under 10 or 5 or 3 per town, depending how desperate you are.
If you have been filing regularly in the bigger towns, they may continue to check sigs you file up until Aug 15. It is up to each town clerk.
In one case, a Congressional candidate took his final signatures to the Town of Brunswick office, at 2pm on the final day, handed them to the town clerk, got them checked in under 10 minutes, added this to the already checked pile, which then had just a few more than the required number (2,000 valid if I remember correctly), and drove to Augusta to file before the 5pm State deadline. He got on the ballot with sigs collected in the morning on the final day. (Others had been collected and validated earlier.)
I’ve petitioned and managed ballot drives in more than a dozen states. In Maine, the climate is laid back, the people are friendly and want to help. Maine was always the easiest.
Who was the shady individual in Maine? Heck, I would have gone to Maine and collect 4,000 sigs for $10K.
I suspect, as I feared, the distractions of petitioning in WV with no realistic hope of making the ballot, tied up a lot of petitioners and cost a lot of money that could have been spent where ballot status *was* achievable. Amazing how the LP (or more likely the campaign) has to keep learning the same lesson over and over again. I know of two long-time professional LP petitioners who were not even contacted and have been marking time collecting for Constitution and Nader (whose staffs *do* have their act together).
Maine is tricky, but far from impossible. Failing there is downright shameful.
Hmm. I wonder if anyone has every thought about writing some type of book on ‘Petitioning For Dummies’ or something to that effect.
Also, why don’t the minor parties and independents work together? Can’t a signer for one petition due more then one?
Coming back to the LP: I just checked the Connecticut LP WEbsite, and they handed in 13000 signatures on time, out of a required 7500, not to mention all the other petitions handed in by town clerks.
so even if a few thousand signatures are incorrect, theyll still be on the ballot.
This is exciting because then I can begin telling more of my friends and family about Bob Barr.
But that sucks about Maine though, hopefully SCOTUS will make a common sense decision for once :).
Very disappointing. This campaign is so underachieving it is becoming embarrassing.
There was a time I cared. But when the LP nominated a conservative like Barr I gave up on the Party. I used to go out and collect those petitions now I wouldn’t even sign one.
This is outrageous.
What kind of a joke state doesn’t even have one acceptable candidate on the ballot for conservatives?
Maine should be sent back to Massachusetts, Cookson should be impeached, and the whole state government disbanded.
Sue the bastards. Sue them until they scream for mercy.
Huh? Get your facts straight. The LP did send petitioners in to Maine with 2 1/2 days left to go. The deadline was 5 pm Friday. 4 of us got there by Wednesday afternoon, after a night of no sleep staying up all night in a very shitty drug crime neighborhood in downtown Hartford, trying to get our CT signatures notarized after the Ralph Nader fuckers who agreed to assist with the notarization bailed.
Funny how people who think they know it all talk out of their asses on on-line forurms.
Alex, that is indeed correct. We handed in way more than needed in Connecticut cause we were so scared of not making it. CT was pure anarchy and choas. There was only one single local Libertarian Party guy on the ground there who helped. And he was AN ABSOLUTE HERO!! Andy Rule, Libertarian Party of CT Treasurer: Himself a local appointed Justice of the Peace and Notary. The other CT LPers didn’t lift a finger to assist. Rumors were that the Leftwing George Phillies people got to the State Party and told them to sit on their hands. Andy heroically took it upon himself to run the whole thing by himself.
But because CT was so last minute, as a result of our being delayed in New Hampshire, which resulted from the Phillies people actively sabotaging our efforts up there, we got a very late start into Maine.
Friggin’ Maine is a 5 hours drive from Hartford.
If we had gotten into Maine just one day earlier, or if we had gotten into the State that Wednesday morning, instead of Wednesday evening, we might have had a shot.
But as it is, George Phillies can and should be blamed for us missing the ballot there.
ETJB, why don’t the third parties work together?
The Ralph Nader people actively worked against us Libertarians throughout New England.
In New Hampshire it reached extreme levels. Their petitioners blocked us at Festivals. They stole our locations like at the DMV. We’d be there early in the morning. They’d come late in the morning with about 4 or 5 petitioners and surround us, preventing us from gathering any signatures.
I was lucky, cause I mostly petitioned Nashua. For some reason they didn’t come to that town.
But our guy up in Concord was swamped by Naderites. At one parade he had 12 of them blocking him from getting any signatures. He finally gave up and left.
In Connecticut, the Naderites screwed us in another way. A gentleman’s agreement had been cut between the LP and the Naderites to jointly Notarize signatures for all petitioners on the last day, at the home of a bigtime Nader person. Well, the Nader people got all their petitioners notarized in the late afternoon. The Libertarians arrived at 7, 8 and 9 pm.
One of the Naderite Hosts was overheard saying on his cell phone, “I can’t talk any more, I’ve got a house full of fucking libertarians…”
Soon afterwards, the two main Nader Notaries took off and left. This caused the lone Nader Notary who stayed, and the lone Libertarian notary to stay there til friggin’ 5 am in the morning notarizing petitions. It was a madhouse.
Guess Leftists believe cooperation means only one-way.
Yes, Maine is a very easy place to gather signatures. People in Maines are extremely friendly and willing to sign petitions, much more so than neighboring New Hampshire. It’s like night and day. (CT and RI folks are also quite friendly, but not nearly as much as Mainers.)
Problem again, was not the signature gathering process. Problem was we got there with only two and a half days left to get the signatures, sort them, and drive them to every town in the state by the 5 pm deadline.
Again, this would have been a relatively easy task were it not for the fact that the renegade George Phillies Campaign up in New Hampshire kept us from getting to CT on time, which kept us there in CT to the very, very final hours of the last day.
Add to that, the factor of the Ralph Nader Notaries bailing on us at the last minute in CT, and you start to understand what went wrong in Maine.
It’s not too far-fetched to say that the possibility exists that Leftwing Libertarians in cahoots with outright Leftwingers, might have deliberately coordinated efforts to keep Bob Barr off the ballots in at least three New England States.
They may have succeeded in one. But they got their ass kicked in the other two.
Coming back to the LP – Barr should have no trouble making the ballot in New York State. They’ve handed in over 25,000 signatures and even if 30% were declared invalid, that still leaves them with more than enough. The LP Party has never had a problem in getting their Presidential or Gubernatorial candidates on the ballot.
Does anyone know of a website that lists what states the Green, Constitution and Libertarian parties achieved ballot access in and also lists the number of electoral votes for each of those states? There was one in the last Presidential election but I can’t find it now. Don’t know if it’s still up and running. Thanks in advance.
Steve Z:
There is a ballot access chart on this very website.
If you prefer a graphic, I made some maps on my blog, but they are not updated as frequently.
Some of the Libertarian Party comments remind me of what I used to read on “Third Party Watch.” Has that site gotten any better, by the way?
This is why the Libertarian Party ought to have had its convention earlier, nominated someone in February, and started the ballot access drive sooner.
So should the Constitution Party have.
It just doesn’t seem that the third parties have their acts together, and it’s just so sad! This is the year that they could do very well!
Separate is NOT equal.
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954)
Way too difficult for the armies of MORON lawyers doing (and losing) ballot access cases for third party and independent candidates since 1968 — a mere 40 years of TOTAL legal malpractice by such MORON lawyers — especially the mini-armies of MORON LP lawyers since 1971.
P.R. and Approval Voting after EQUAL nominating petitions for ALL candidates for the same office in the same area.
NO need for MORON party hack caucuses, primaries and conventions.
Just askin writes, “Who was the shady individual in Maine? Heck, I would have gone to Maine and collect 4,000 sigs for $10K.”
I would have seriously considered it myself. And I’m in California, and not even a Barr supporter! Over $2 a signature is a very good rate, and it shouldn’t be that tough to get people to sign just to allow a candidate to be on the ballot. I’m used to circulating petitions for ballot measures, where you often have to take time to explain the issue to people. And usually the most popular measures for which it’s easiest to get people to sign pay less than $2 a sig.
I suspect one reason 3rd parties come off as so disorganized and inept is because they are riddled with major party saboteurs. Does anyone doubt at this point that Alan Keyes was merely a troublemaker recruited by his pals the Neocons to disrupt the Constitution Party’s nominating effort? And lest anyone think that is silly conspiracy theorizing, just recall how the Republican Party sent thugs to infiltrate and disrupt the wedding of Ross Perot’s daughter back in 1992 in a shrewdly calculated attempt to drive Perot out of the campiagn.
Demo Rep:
As one of those “moron lawyers” I ask what are you talking about? Do you have any idea what is involved in federal constitutional litigation? The “lawyers” are typically volunteers who get paid, if at all, from an attorney’s fee award against the state (if they win)years down the road.
Even a relatively simple case involves $20K worth of time.
What *is* lacking is a coherent litigation strategy both to challenge repressive, unconstitutional laws but also to prevent screw ups by timely legal advice on issues like candidate substitution. Maybe this was done, but I doubt it.
Lack of ongoing legal work and reliance on volunteers does in fact lead to screw ups. In the ’80s I was in Alabama waiting in the judge’s chambers for a TRO hearing on the state law when a decision came down on a FL case that *was* handled badly and was filed by the state party against legal advice. Resulted in us being booted us right out of court.
You mention “Brown vs. Board”. I have long thought that we need the eqivilent in ballot access. Are you willing to contribute to the 100-200k that such a case would require?
Regards.
I’m working off of 2nd hand information, but.
As to Comment #13:
“…a Congressional candidate took his final signatures to the Town of Brunswick office, at 2pm on the final day, handed them to the town clerk, got them checked in under 10 minutes, added this to the already checked pile, which then had just a few more than the required number (2,000 valid if I remember correctly), and drove to Augusta to file before the 5pm State deadline. He got on the ballot with sigs collected in the morning on the final day.”
Normally this is how it works on the last day. But the Secretary of State’s office changed the rules on us. They told municipal clerks that they COULDN’T verify signatures that late.
There are two deadlines. The one last Friday was the one to get the verified signatures to the Secretary of State.
The earlier deadline on the prior Friday was one to submit the signatures to the municipal clerks. Now that deadline had never been treated as a hard deadline, just that municipalities COULD refuse to take in petitions for verification after that date. As stated by someone else earlier, most municipalities were very nice about this and were willing to certify signatures during the last week.
However, the Secretary of State ordered the town clerks that they were not to do this. This is likely to be one of the issues brought up in any legal complaint over this.
It used to be that only referendum petitions were given high scrutiny. It looks like between this and another independent candidate being booted from the Senate ballot, that the days of Maine being a relatively easier state for ballot access are in the past.
Re: comment #17
Alex. 13,000 is such a round number, I wonder what the actual hard count was.
Unlike ME, where it is common to get 90% validity, CT usually comes in with 60% to 70% valid, even for the best petitioners.
60% of 13,000 is cutting it close, and I’ve learned over the years that when someone says 13,000 in nice round numbers, it’s more than likely 12,647 or 12,325 or no real “hard” count has been done.
60% of 12,500 would just make the 7,500 required.
So, the CT numbers look very tight to me. I do hope they have enough.
The major parties are not infiltrating or sabotaging the LP on a widescale level. They simply don’t need to, the Libertarian Party will destroy itself on its own.
You have members fighting against the Barr campaign, doing their best to make it fail – just like every other Presidential content. Badnarik and Browne got so much opposition internally that the major parties didn’t even need to worry.
Let’s not forget the Mary Ruwart supporters who lied their way to become a Barr elector, and then declared that they will not cast a vote for Barr should he win their state. With such internal sabotage well underway, the major parties can sit back and relax.
Some old story every four years.
Coming Back to the LP: the exact number is 12926 signatures
And ERic: I know what you mean about the LP CT. I tried contacting them for months, trying to get some information on what to do for ballot drives, but they never got back to me.
Maine is not off the list as yet. Our latest news is that enough clerks have certified signatures and those have been turned into the SOS office for review.
The full petitions were filed with the SOS by the deadline – it was a memo from the SOS instructing local clerks not to accept petitions a week prior that was the issue.
We await word on the ballot for Maine, however as of this post full signatures have been submitted to the SOS.
Clark Phinney – Chair, Maine Libertarian Party
Ural – I agree with you in principal as to minor parties being infiltrated. As an example, the Conservative Party of New York has pretty much been taken over by the Republicans so that 99% of candidates from both parties are the same person on the state and federal level. The only one I remember not being the same was the U.S. Senate candidate two years.
Tom Bryant – I agree with you too. A lot of the problems that the Third Parties have are self created. A lot of the local party bosses treat their local chapters as their own feudal territory to be ruled over, rather than working together with the national affiliation as a group. Until this changes, there is little chance of a third party growing to challenge the Dems/Reps.
To Clark Phinney:
Are you saying that you filed more than 4,000 verified and certified signatures with the Sec of State by the Aug 15th deadline?
If so, they will have no excuse to keep Barr off, and this will indeed be good news.
It’s a longshot, but Barr could still make 48 if this is true.
What the hell is wrong with the Libertarrian Party’s math these days?
I’m sure my 5 year old grandson could figure out that if you need 4,000 valid signatures, you don’t respond by collecting only 3,200 signatures, handing them in, and say, “There you go; are we on the ballot now?â€
Duh.
I hate to use the word “stupid†to describe our political director, but didn’t they teach fundamental math in the schools he attended?
Man!
Coming Back to the LP: have we met? I’m from Maine and have worked on many petition drives there as well. And I agree with most of what you are saying. It’s not THAT hard (when you can get access) in Maine.
My wife and I singlehandedly got the signatures to put Harry Browne on the ballot in Maine in 1996. Our validity was 89%+ (almost 90). We understood that 4,000 valid signatures meant not 3,200 but over 5,000. We turned in 5,100, got a bonus from the Browne campaign for getting the job done under the 6,000 sigs they had projected, and Maine made it in the win column that year.
I returned to Maine in 2004 with a couple of colleagues and once again, we turned in ample signatures to get Badnarik on the ballot.
Because of incompetent management at the political director position (not naming names, of course) this year, I was not called into Maine to work this year. Ergo, Maine failed.
Yes, folks, when Fincher does Maine, it makes it; when Fincher doesn’t do Maine, it fails. So, as Fincher goes, so goes Maine.
Did I mention that I passed mathmatics in school? 🙂
The person resposible for this mess is Stavros Mendros. Yes the person convicted for petition fraud. He was only paying $.75 – $1.00 on the street. Good Scam!
This is not the first drive he has screwed up.
There is no excuse for the LP not having made the ballot in Maine. It is one of the easier states to complete and qualify in: Town clerks that are refreshingly neutral in most cases, low signature requirements with no geographic dispersal and a good lead time. The problem seems to be one of co-ordination and indifference. I am a Republican candidate for the legislature because when I sent out emails asking if the LP would be interested in helping me get on the ballot, no one even responded but The republicans collected enough signatures for me in less than 12 hours to make the primary ballot.
The LP’s biggest problem is this foolish “we’re big boys, too” tantrum it is throwing, pretending that they can wait until Memorial day of the election year to select their candidate. This flies in face of common sense, knowing that they have ballot access and financing issues that mean that the playing field is stacked against them. Like many LP members, I thought selecting a “name” candidate defector from the Republicans would be a good move and give us needed traction to offset our late start. We compromised our principles and got nothing in return.
I won’t be rejoining the LP. I’m going to focus my efforts on starting a Maine affiliate for the Boston Tea Party (www.bostontea.us) and working to build up a sustainable, grassroots level Libertarian alternative for my state. The LP as we know it has had 37 years to make a breakthrough and realistically, hasn’t been able to make a difference. It’s time to start anew.