Maine requires a group that wishes to become a qualified party to obtain 5,000 registered members. This requirement was created in 2013, and replaced the old, very difficult 5% petition that had been in the law starting in 1976. The Maine Libertarian Party has been carrying on a voter registration drive for the last six months, and now has over 5,000 registrations, although they have not all yet been submitted to election officials. The drive is continuing with a goal of 6,000, for safety.
The last time the Libertarian Party was a qualified party in Maine was 1991-1992. Currently the Green Party is ballot-qualified in Maine. The Reform Party was also a ballot-qualified party in Maine in the 1990’s, but before that Maine hadn’t had any ballot-qualified parties other than the Republican and Democratic Parties since the 1910’s decade.
I’ve got to wonder what the quality of these registrations are, being that non-libertarian mercenaries are working on this drive, and actual Libertarians were turned away from working on it, even though there were several long time Libertarians who were ready, willing, and able to work on this registration drive.
I would not be surprised if most of the people registered because they signed a petition to legalize weed, and they don’t know much if anything about the party beyond legalizing weed, if they even know that.
A person who favors legalizing marijuana is not necessarily a libertarian. This is one libertarian issue, but it takes a lot more than this for one to be a libertarian. Lots of people think that marijuana should be legal, but most of these people are not libertarians.
It will be nice if the Libertarian Party qualifies for the ballot in Maine, but whatever job that is done could have been done better if actual Libertarian activist were working there.
Andy – pass that doobie, would you?
Andy is just jealous of people who are better petitioners and more libertarian than he is such as Scott Kohlhaas, Eric Dondero, Chaz Tuttle, Emmett Reistroffer, Darryl Bonner, John Michael, Rob Wilkinson, and many others. Andy is nothing but a jealous hater and a racist. Also, there is nothing wrong with Andy (Jacobs) and his homo butt buddy Paul Frankel being racists or homosexuals but why do they have to hate everyone who is not a homosexual so much? Also I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to use illegal drugs but these guys use them all the time so they are almost never even coherent and that is not a good thing at all.
“Facts
October 5, 2015 at 10:30 pm
Andy is just jealous of people who are better petitioners and more libertarian than he is such as”
What a load of crap! Most of the people that you mentioned above have no legitimate claim of even being libertarians.
NOBODY does Libertarian Party ballot access better than I do. NOBODY.
However, this is not just about me, it is about having ACTUAL Libertarians going out in the field talking to the public about signing Libertarian Party ballot access petitions, and getting people to register to vote under the Libertarian Party banner, instead of sending out unphilosphical non-libertarian mercenaries. The type of people who are just as happy to work on petitions to place Top Two Primary on the ballot, or to petition for government mandated minimum wage increases, or petitions against gay marriage.
Notice how the person above has to hide behind the FAKE screen name, “Facts.” This is because the person in question is a coward who does not have any actual facts on their side, so they have to resort to making things up and name calling. Pretty pathetic.
I wish the Libertarian Party would be accepting of people who do not accept ALL of their positions on some of the major and controversial issues. I am “libertarian” on some issues and “populist” on others. One of the reasons the Republicans and Democrats always win is they operate under a “big tent.”
So why can’t the Libertarian Party operate as such?
“Alabama Independent
October 6, 2015 at 7:58 am
I wish the Libertarian Party would be accepting of people who do not accept ALL of their positions on some of the major and controversial issues. I am “libertarian” on some issues and “populist” on others. One of the reasons the Republicans and Democrats always win is they operate under a ‘big tent.’
So why can’t the Libertarian Party operate as such?”
It is one thing to “accept” somebody as a fellow human being, and to work with them on issues where you have common ground, but it is another thing to hire a person to represent your party to the public, and to sell your message to the public.
The Libertarian Party hiring a crew that consists solely of non-libertarian mercenaries instead of actual Libertarians would be like if the Mormon Church sent a group of people out to spread their message to the public which consisted of atheists, agnostics, Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Muslims, and Scientologists, but no actual Mormons. Unlike the Libertarian Party, the Mormon Church is not foolish enough to do something like this.
I am surprised Andy feels this way. The analogy to LDS missionaries is not a sound analogy. LDS missionaries are trying to persuade persons to join the LDS church. This is extraordinarily difficult work that results in very few new members. When Mitt Romney was an LDS missionary in France, he and his team did not get one single new member. But what the Libertarian Party is doing in Maine, and what it has long done on other registration drives in Alaska, Arizona, California, Delaware, Louisiana and Oregon, is asking people to register into the party so it can be on the ballot. The California registration drive that put the LP on the California ballot in 1979 was very similar to the current Maine drive. The California LP hired college women to go on the beaches of southern California to get LP registrants. It was a success. After the party gets on the ballot (in both California and Maine) THEN it is listed on the voter registration form as a choice, so over time more committed libertarian people use the card and join the party, and then if the initial recruits aren’t that interested in the party, then drop out but no harm has been done.
I trust that Andy will not misunderstand my comments here. What I get from his remarks, is that the Libertarian Party should only have members and candidates who accept the Party’s doctrine and Platform by crossing all their “t’s” and dotting their “i’s” just exactly as the party’s leaders demand.
Then what do you have? A party that is ideological pure as some parties that have existed before. I know I will catch flack for saying this, but was not the Nazi Party in Germany an ideological pure party?
“Facts” is the same troll who has been posting the same kind of nonsense as above. Andy and Paul are not gay; there is nothing wrong with being gay, but they aren’t. Andy and Paul are not racist, whereas “Facts” also posts as Vernon1488 and various other racist pseudonyms on his/her/their own blog and on IPR. Andy and Paul rarely use illegal drugs, although Paul has admittedly used a lot of illegal drugs in the past many years ago.
Regarding the issue of who is doing the registering and who is being registered, I think Richard is correct as far as the people being registered. It is important that the party meet the initial threshold to be recognized as a party and allow other libertarians to register into it in the future, by seeing it on their registration form as an option. It also gives ballot access to the candidates of the party.
However, Andy has a point about who is *doing* the registering of voters. It would be preferable if the people asking others to register into the LP were LP supporters themselves, so that they would be able to identify actual libertarians while also registering anyone else willing to do so as Libertarian and getting them more involved than just registering only.
Regarding the point AI makes, the Libertarian Party exists to promote the libertarian ideology. While there are many differences among LP members about the details, it does not exist to promote the idea of making government bigger at home or abroad, on economic issues or on social issues. We are not the Reform Party; we have a direction we want government to move in, and that direction is to shrink.
Meant to say:
“Facts” is the same troll who has been posting the same kind of nonsense as above at Independent Political Report and other places.
Alabama Independent, the National Socialist Party of Germany of the 1920’s-1930’s-1940’s was not ideologically pure. It was very vague about its preferred economic policies.
“…would be like if the Mormon Church sent a group of people out to spread their message to the public which consisted of atheists, agnostics, Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Muslims, and Scientologists, but no actual Mormons. Unlike the Libertarian Party, the Mormon Church is not foolish enough to do something like this.”
The LDS Church already does this, it’s called MISSIONARY WORK, and they do it in many countries with little to almost no LDS members, in fact they did this decades ago in certain Asian and Latin countries that never had a LDS church presence back then but do now- the Philippines is one of them.
And such LDS efforts have been successful. Please use a better comparison next time.
Cody Quirk, I do believe you misread what Andy wrote … try reading it again.
I’ve encountered those people who wear white button shirts, black slacks, and black ties, and who carry around bibles, in multiple states, and all of the ones I have encountered have been actual Mormons, as far as I know.
If the Libertarian Party followed the example of how to do field activism as set by the Mormon Church, the Libertarian Party would be more successful right now.
“If the Libertarian Party followed the example of how to do field activism as set by the Mormon Church, the Libertarian Party would be more successful right now.”
This is very true for all 3rd parties. But most 3rd partisans have to work 5 or 6 days a week and don’t have time to do this “activism” for their party. People don’t read anymore (except people like we 3rd partisans) so you have to get their attention on a controversial issue which they agree and we both agree on. If our candidate is the only one taking the position the people like, then you get their votes – at least a few of them.
All 3rd parties need to learn somehow to work under a “big tent” If we had something like an Independent National Committee and an Independent National Convention, where we all worked through the democratic process to nominate presidential candidates, and used the Primary process that could also be established if we had a coalition of 3rd parties in each state, then Libertarians would win some nominations – Constitutionalists would win some nominations – Greens would win some nominations, we just might build up a “3rd Party” coalition that might really threaten the two party system. But so much for daydreaming….
“This is very true for all 3rd parties. But most 3rd partisans have to work 5 or 6 days a week and don’t have time to do this “activism” for their party.”
The Libertarian Party could have easily had actual Libertarians working in Maine. Several were available, and one even made a phone call inquiring about working there, but this phone call was never even returned.
The truth of the matter is that most of the people in leadership/management positions in the Libertarian Party put zero effort into putting actual Libertarians in the field to talk to the public and to spread the Libertarian message during the course of petition or voter registration drives.