On Saturday, May 9, Congressman Justin Amash participated in his first debate with other Libertarians seeking the presidential nomination. The debate was sponsored by the Kentucky Libertarian Party and included five candidates. The others were Jim Gray, Jacob Hornberger, Jo Jorgensen, and Vermin Supreme.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
I don’t believe it. Vermin took his boot off. Does that mean he’s getting serious now, or did he just have an itch?
He’s taken off his boot for most of the debates before this, too. Yes, he is serious and very much for real. This isn’t like his past runs.
I had to listen to one answer from Amash a couple of times, and he said he’d change his Committee from Exploratory only if he got the LP POTUS nomination.
Which essentially means: he’s thinking about running, and will run if he gets the nomination but otherwise won’t declare that he’s running.
You can listen to the question AND answer here:
https://youtu.be/mYFlrDIeOz8?t=5060
I was under the assumption a candidate had to be officially running instead of just having an Exploritory Committee by the time the convention comes around. Is this not correct, or what?
Amash is a current elected official, so Sarwark will bend the rules. He loves those Republican washouts!
Vermin Supreme put the boot on his head around the beginning of the LP of CA debate, but then he took it off.
Amash would be the LP’s strongest candidate, for the very reasons that make many of the hard-core Libertarians skeptical of him.
We’ve heard that line how many times now? What’s it doing for the party, again?
Amash may have misspoken about being exploratory all the way through to the nomination.
Dennis – Mike Badnarik received about 400,000 votes – Gary Johnson received abut 4,500,000 votes.
Gary Johnson was interviewed on television multiple times, and Justin Amash has already been on several TV programs. The same cannot be said for Badnarik, or even former best selling author Harry Browne.
If we had a HarryBrowne, a committed libertarian who had some celebrity as an author or otherwise, such a person could have a campaign with some visibility. But we don’t have such a person, and a former Republican office-holder is the best we can go with to get any visibility this year.
@Gene – RE “a campaign with some visibility.” Man, you can’t get any better for that than nominating Mr. Vermin! I would bet that a Supreme/Amash ticket would push the 10,000,000 threshold. It would be the ultimate In Your Face vote for many people, particularly new/inactive voters.
Can Hornberger and Vermin unite to form an anti-Amash delegate block?
Jorgensen/Hornberger with the promise that if they win they will let Vermin Supreme give Trump the boot!
So, you’ve told me what crossover republicans have done for their own campaigns, but what have they done for the party? Is the membership jumping to a new level and staying higher? Are contributions an order of magnitude higher? Do we have many more people at local meetings? Do we have ten times more people running for local office? Are they winning ten times as often? Do their campaigns get a lot more contributions and volunteers than when Browne and Badnarik ran? What exactly are these republicans doing for the L.P….other than better votes for themselves (sometimes; Paul and Barr not so much, so actually only Johnson) and watering down the message which is allegedly why the L.P. exists to begin with?
The party has grown by over 360,000 registered Libertarians since 2008, a 150% increase. So yes the party has grown immensely. http://ballot-access.org/2020/03/27/march-2020-ballot-access-news-print-edition/
Brandon, that is in voter registrations, NOT dues paying members, and it is dues paying members that is the more important metric.
The LP had at least DOUBLE the dues paying membership 20 years ago than it has today, and US population has gone up since then.
The clubby LP monarchs/oligarchs with their fatal defective Bylaws [mostly copied from the 1970 Elephant Bylaws] have driven the LP into the ground – esp since 2000.
PR
APPV
TOTSOP
— applies to govts and the LP.
Voter registration went up before then as well. Certain things accelerate it including status in more states, due to better laws; more states allowing online registration ; greater attention to small l libertarians outside the party. I mentioned a broader range of performance measures. Have they gone up by anything like the vote total difference from badnarik to Johnson?
Approval voting hasn’t worked out well for the L.P. And as for proportional representation and total separation of powers I’m not sure how you’re even applying those concepts to internal party governance.
Andy – 20 years ago the national LP was counting people who ordinarily only donated to the state party as national party donors because of the Unified Membership Plan. It isn’t an apples to apples comparison. If you want an apples to apples comparison, you have to include in today’s total all of the people who only donated to their state party, but not national. I’ve explained that to you repeatedly. At this point you are just being intentionally deceptive.
“Brandon, that is in voter registrations, NOT dues paying members, and it is dues paying members that is the more important metric.” I could not disagree more, I am both a dues paying member of the National LP and a registered LBT voter, and to me it is obvious that registered LP voters are whats more important
If we only look at the data from the 14 states which have reported LP voter registrations every fall from 1998 to 2018, there is an obvious sharply accelerated growth between 2008 and 2018 relative to 1998 to 2008.
The 14 states that I am using are: AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, KS, LA, MA, NV, NM, OR, SD, WY.
And the totals from those 14 states are:
1998: 147,755
2000: 173,170
2002: 179,039
2004: 193,695
2006: 181,898
2008: 181,038
2010: 200,789
2012: 234,096
2014: 269,023
2016: 321,295
2018: 355,321
The last 5 two year cycles have each produced double digit percentage growth. That only happened once in the first 5 two year cycles (98 to 00), and two of the first five were negative (2004 to 2006 and 2006 to 2008).
Yes and I gave you several explanations for that other than running crossovers. Online registration. Ron Paul (not his 1988 run).
But more importantly I mentioned a bunch of other performance measures besides dues payers and registrations. You haven’t even tried to address any of those.
Even sticking with just those two, did either go up tenfold? And as far as state only members…how many would you say there are?
That would be fun.
You have a ring, and candidates toss their hat in. A few cowboy hats for candidates from Texas and the west. Easter bonnets from female candidates, business hats from the 50s, perhaps a beret from leftists.
Then kerthud! as Supreme tosses his boot in. Even better if the candidates are lined up and Supreme is toward the rear so his boot comes sailing over the crowd.
Don’t forget Behrman
I don’t know why online registration would make a difference. Contrary to popular belief, libertarians do, in fact, exist in the real world and are just as capable as ordinary people of getting off the couch to go register to vote in person.
I am fine with attributing the 2008 – 2013 portion of the rise in LP voter registrations to Ron Paul. I count myself in that group. 2012 – 2018 I would give to Johnson. Barr I don’t think contributed anything.
Getting a total candidate count is difficult, but by my count, 2018 (at 885) had the second highest number of LP candidates in non-presidential even year, behind only 2002. But there isn’t a clear trend and maybe that is due to the difficulty of counting local candidates. FWIW, by my count, 2014 was 743, 2010 was 813, and 2006 was 624. I am sure that I am missing some local candidates from 2006, but there is no question that it was lower than 2018.
Membership (national party donors who have signed the Libertarian Pledge) and total donations are sometimes influenced by non-political factors. Like the unemployment rate.
My estimate is that there are 10,000 people who donate to their state party, but not national. The jump up when the UMP began was around 11,000, with perhaps an additional 9,000 from Project Archimedes during the latter half of the UMP phase-in and maybe 2,000 ordinary Presidential year donors in the year 2000, resulting in a total increase of roughly 22,000 between 1995 and 2000. All of those overlap to some extent, making clear delineations impossible, but that’s my guess when looking at the chart.
If 10,000 is in the ballpark, then an apples to apples comparison would have membership around 27,000 right now, and climbing rapidly as it is a Presidential year. National membership increased by 563 just between the end of March and the end of April.
So, nothing even remotely approaching a new level or order of magnitude. Got it.
Why would it? People come to libertarianism and the Libertarian Party in stages. Voting for Libertarian candidates is an early part of that process. The LP ALWAYS has had more election voters than registered voters, more registered voters than signature members, and more signature members than active members.
Why would you expect all growth to be simultaneously proportional?
The number of unique voters for Libertarian candidates did not increase by an order of magnitude in 2016 either, by the way. My count of the minimum number of unique Libertarian voters in Presidential years is as follows:
2016: 7.4 million
2012: 5.1 million
2008: 4.1 million
2004: 3.2 million
2000: 3.7 million
1996: 2.2 million
1992: 2.8 million
1988: 1.4 million
1984: 0.7 million
1980: 1.4 million
1976: 0.4 million
Most people who vote for Libertarian candidates do not vote for the Presidential ticket. It is easily provable that, in some years, 90% of down ballot Libertarian voters fail to vote Libertarian for President. That was as true for Barr in 2008 (87%) as it was for Badnarik in 2004 (87%), and Browne in 2000 (89%). Johnson in 2016 didn’t just attract voters who had never voted Libertarian before, he also reduced the minimum percent of voters who voted L down ballot, but not for President, to 39%.
Trading principles for votes does not equal better. Just rename the party Has-been Republican, because that’s what it is now.
The LP had over 600 people in elected offices back in 2003. Today it has maybe 1/3 of that.
In the last fifty years there have been five Members of Congress who became nominees of alternative parties: Virgil Goode, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, Ron Paul, and John G. Schmitz. Of those, the one who finished with the highest percentage of the vote was Schmitz, with 1.42%. All the rest had percentages that began with a decimal point. Being a Member of Congress does not automatically translate into getting votes as an alternative party presidential candidate.
Note that John Anderson ran as an Independent and even though he dropped out of the GOP nomination race in the middle he still finished second to Reagan and had received millions of votes in Republican primaries.
The income of the national L.P. is a quarter of what it was 20 years ago. Fewer state parties have offices or employees. Anecdotally most places have fewer people at party meetings and less participants in party outreach events. There are fewer candidates, fewer people in office, and at best no great increase in human or financial resources for downballot campaigns from 20 years ago. I seriously doubt all state parties put together have anywhere near 10,000 state only members. And Tim is correct, trading principles for votes does not equal better.
In West Virginia, the LP’s voter registration started increasing exponentially (serious upward curve) beginning in October/November, 2013. Then, as of December ’16, it rather abruptly leveled off to a steady linear increase. The data can be found here if you’d like to make a plot of it as I have: https://sos.wv.gov/elections/Pages/VoteRegTotals.aspx I wish there was a way to share an image of the graph as I find it, along with the Mountain (Green) Party’s performance, rather interesting. Comparing the two, clearly the LP was locally very active with their voter registration efforts for several years whereas the Mountain Party was just relying on people liking the name of their party as found pre-printed on the form. And, prior to 2014, the LP and Mountain Party registrations show up graphically as an almost exact match.
@Chris – you included John Schmitz, but somehow left off Louisiana congressman John Rarick (Democrat) who was the AIP nominee in 1980. Six members of Congress.
Rarick didn’t do well either. As for wv the mountain party has had ballot status longer than the L.P., that may have something to do with it.
Someone may be doing mental gymnastics and manipulating statistics but not me.
@Dennis ?
Mountain Party (qualified November 2000) current voter registration: 2289
Libertarian Party (requalified November 2012) current voter registration: 7568
(At time of requalification, October 1, 2012 data, they were both about tied: Mountain: 1345, LP: 1440)
Also, LPWV originally qualified November 1996, but lost party status November 2000. They were then unrecognized for a dozen years.
As to former members of Congress running for President in the past 50 years, of the 6 mentioned for third parties, Schmitz was the only one currently in Congress (even though lost his house primary that year), and the only one to top 1%. Anderson, as well as McCarthy, also ran, as Independents.
It’s not reasonable to look at Johnson’s vote total and post something like “What’s it doing for the party, again?”.
Dues paying membership isn’t the most important measure except maybe for LP clerical staff who just view it as a job and want payroll to be met. I’d hope the staff with actual policy/strategy decision making authority have a higher goal than Dennis’s.
You can argue that Johnson was too “lite” a libertarian and the compromise wasn’t worth it, that’s a value judgment. But I don’t think you claim there was nothing on the other side of the balance. We got:
-A strong head start on 2020 ballot access.
-At least 4.5 million voters with a demonstrated willingness to look at our candidates and give them serious consideration.
I mentioned a bunch of different yardsticks, not just dues payers. Ballot access improvements have had more to do with changes in law than with Johnson.
When a party gets ballot status it takes a while for new voter registration cards which mention it to replace old ones everywhere. So, that may have something to do with why a party which requalified in 2012 started getting a lot more registered voters in 2013.
Jeff, thank you for pointing out Rarick.
@Dennis – Right. But my point is that the LPWV’s voter registration graphs exhibit completely different curves for the periods of 1998-2013, 2014-2016, and 2017 to present. Near flatline, exponential, linear upward slope. Clearly there was influence by something/someone. IMO, presidential candidates seem to be the best explanation.
If it was the best explanation wouldn’t it have gone up even faster after 2016, when Johnson did better than he did in 2012? Did all the other states where the LP is an option follow that same pattern? It seems like your explanation is missing some factors. It stands to reason that a party which requalified for the ballot after a dozen years during which time the “L word” had become much better known, would grow quickly for a number of years, then that growth would somewhat level off.
“Dues paying membership isn’t the most important measure except maybe for LP clerical staff who just view it as a job and want payroll to be met. I’d hope the staff with actual policy/strategy decision making authority have a higher goal than Dennis’s.”
The more dues paying members there are, the more money the party can raise. Money is the life blood of politics. It is not just about paying office staff salaries. If you don’t have money, you can’t do much of anything in politics.
Also, more dues paying members means more activists. You can’t win without numbers.
“You can argue that Johnson was too ‘lite;’ a libertarian and the compromise wasn’t worth it, that’s a value judgment.”
Johnson/Weld severely watered down, and outright misrepresented, the Libertarian Party platform and philosophy on multiple issues, and in multiples ways. They also looked like unprincipled goofballs in several interviews.
“But I don’t think you claim there was nothing on the other side of the balance. We got:
-A strong head start on 2020 ballot access.”
A lot of that ballot access had little or nothing to do with Johnson/Weld. I think they picked up ballot access, or partial ballot access, in maybe 5 states. I know they got Oklahoma, but that only happened due to a successful ballot drive, done by the LP of OK and LP National, prior to Johnson/Weld being nominated, and due to the vote test to retain ballot access being lowered, after many years of lawsuits and lobbying for ballot access reform.
Some of the states that retained access, did it via a vote test for an office other than President, such as for Governor, or some other statewide office. I know in Texas it was a guy running for Railroad Commission that retained ballot access for the LP there.
I think they met the vote test in Massachusetts, but it was only good for one election, and in Mass, it only means that your presidential ticket does not have to petition for ballot access, all the rest of your candidates still have to petition their way on the ballot, and the petitioning actually becomes more difficult once you get part status, because only people registered with your party, or registered unenrolled, can sign. The LP of MA retained access for 2020 by a guy running for State Auditor, so that is why the LP does not have to petition for President there this year.
Johnson/Weld got the LP ballot access in Kentucky, which is good for 4 years, and it includes all partisan offices, so that was nice.
“At least 4.5 million voters with a demonstrated willingness to look at our candidates and give them serious consideration.”
Who is to say that some other combination of candidates could not have done the same thing. Say the ticket had been Austin Petersen/Larry Sharpe, or John McAfee/Larry Sharpe, for instance. Maybe they would have gotten as many, or more votes than Johnson. Even if they had gotten less votes, I think they would have at least run a more principled campaign.
Does the Libertarian Party exist just to get votes for the sake of getting votes, or is the message important? I say that the message is important, and if the message is really weak, or even against the philosophy, then there is no point to the campaign. Getting votes for the sake of getting votes is meaningless.
-At least 4.5 million voters with a demonstrated willingness to look at our candidates and give them serious consideration.
Also, a lot of the votes that Johnson/Weld received were PROTEST votes because people did not like Hillary or Trump, who, polls indicated, had a record level of disgust from the public. There was a lack of competition from other minor party and independent tickets, so Johnson/Weld did better than average for an LP ticket, in spite of them being candidates lots of the public thought were lame.
Andy-
I appreciate the well thought out response.
Maybe you’re right that we would’ve had a pretty good year for ballot access anyway. It’s hard to say how many extra down-ballot votes were brought in by having GJ at the top, there’ll never be a controlled experiment where everything else is the same.
“Who is to say that some other combination of candidates could not have done the same thing. Say the ticket had been Austin Petersen/Larry Sharpe, or John McAfee/Larry Sharpe, for instance.”
I’ll say it: I don’t think Austin Petersen or John McAfee would have come close. Better than our default 500K floor, sure, but not 4.5M. You are correct that many GJ votes were because DJT and HRC were immensely unlikable. The problem is that Petersen and McAfee were – let’s admit it – a bit prickly and unlikable themselves.
And of course opinions will differ, but I didn’t see either one of them as more libertarian than Johnson. I could give a point by point but you’re knowledgeable and don’t need a review from me.
“Does the Libertarian Party exist just to get votes for the sake of getting votes, or is the message important? I say that the message is important”
We want to get votes for the message. We just disagree on whether GJ was libertarian enough. He was plenty good enough for me, and most likely Amash will be also.
Having ballot status in more states has helped The Libertarian Party increase its registration. The biggest boost in ongoing ballot status came with the 4.5 million votes cast for Gary Johnson in 2016, leaving The Libertarian Party with ballot status in 35 states after the election – much better than the results of any previous election.
Again, most of that was because of changes in retention laws. Johnson had relatively little to do with it. Even if we were to say he did, Barr and Paul 88 didn’t do better than the approximate range of candidates in between, Marrou, Browne and Badnarik. So, just because Johnson did somewhat better, there’s no reason to assume Amash will get more than 0.5%.
One difference with Amash as opposed to Paul and Barr, and Johnson/Weld too for that matter, is that Amash would be a sitting elected official, as opposed to a former elected official.
Why not nominate Bernie Sanders if only votes matter? How about Hillary Clinton?
Schmitz was a sitting congressman. It’s not a panacea. California didn’t have the majority of all elected L.P. officials. That’s historically false. Going from 600 to 100 something isn’t just because of California and in fact happened before top two. You speak of gains for the L.P. cause but how does running counter to those principles advance them? And, you’ve not addressed the other barometers I brought up, or the fact that few of the ballot access gains were from Johnson or that other republican crossover candidates haven’t done as well even in terms of votes.
PUBLIC party registration lists are PURGE lists.
See the PURGER-in-Chief in Devil City.
—
SECRET nom pets — same reason as for SECRET ballots.
How many LP laws enacted and statist laws repealed due to the USA/States/Locals LP ANY where in the USA since 1970 ???
Compare with Elephants in 1854-1870.
“I’ll say it: I don’t think Austin Petersen or John McAfee would have come close. Better than our default 500K floor, sure, but not 4.5M. You are correct that many GJ votes were because DJT and HRC were immensely unlikable. The problem is that Petersen and McAfee were – let’s admit it – a bit prickly and unlikable themselves.”
A lot of people did not like Gary Johnson and Bill Weld. Lots of people thought that they were unprincipled. unprepared goofballs.
Petersen or McAfee wouldn’t have done as well. Amash won’t either.
I think Amash would be the LP’s strongest candidate, but he ran into opposition from the Libertarian purists who would rather lose than actually have influence.
Hate to spoil it for you Tim, but, read on, he drops out eventually.