Libertarian Party Will Attempt Tennessee Party Petition for the First Time

On August 20, the Libertarian Party national committee voted to help the Tennessee Libertarian Party get on the ballot for the 2018 election.  This will be the first time the Libertarian Party has made a serious attempt to qualify as a party in Tennessee.  The procedure, a petition signed by a number of voters equal to 2.5% of the last gubernatorial vote, is so difficult, no group has successfully used that procedure since 1968.  In 1968 the American Party completed the petition, to place George Wallace on the ballot.  Back in 1968 Tennessee didn’t permit independent presidential candidates, so Wallace was forced to do the party petition, which was then 5%.

Bills are pending in the Tennessee legislature to ease the procedure.  Thanks to Independent Political Report for this news.


Comments

Libertarian Party Will Attempt Tennessee Party Petition for the First Time — 4 Comments

  1. Every election continues to be NEW —

    regardless of all brain dead court cases before, during and after 1968 —

    EQUAL ballot access tests for all candidates for the same office in the same area.

  2. The pluralist psychology engrained in the Libertarian party bosses has been continual self-inflicted harm to their electoral progress for decades.

  3. I have heard that Tennessee allows incremental turn-in of petitions. That is, the Libertarian Party can turn in batches of signatures at any time; the Tennessee government will validate signatures as they receive them; and the Tennessee government will tell the LP how many signatures are valid in each batch.

    If so, that will eliminate a lot of back-office work and a lot of cost.

    I haven’t checked this out first hand. Actually, this is a good place to ask. Is the above a fair description?

  4. You can ask Ken or check their facebook page or contact their state chair. I can put you in touch. They have already turned in some signatures to the state and already gotten some validity results back.

    However, we may still need to do validity checks on the paid drive. I don’t know what the state’s turnaround time is on checking validity. It may be slower than petitioners would want to wait for their pay. Also, I don’t know that the state would be willing to break validity down by petitioner, which we would want as far as the paid drive.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.