The Green Party, now on the ballot in 21 states plus D.C., hopes to place its presidential nominee on the ballot in at least 40 states plus D.C., with this strategy. Six Green Parties can handle their own ballot access; they are Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Washington.
Then, the party hopes to get 13 more states, by the device of having Green Parties pair up with each other. In other words, a Green Party that is safely on the ballot already (or a Green Party in a state in which ballot access is hopelessly difficult) will help a neighbor state with the neighbor state’s petition. According to GreenPartyWatch, the formulas are: Alabama will get help from Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; Connecticut will get help from Massachusetts and Rhode Island; Iowa will get help from Illinois and Wisconsin; Kansas will get help from Nebraska; Kentucky will get help from Illinois and Indiana; Missouri will get help from Arkansas; New Hampshire will get help from Maine; Ohio will get help from Michigan; Pennsylvania will get help from Maryland and D.C.; Utah will get help from Arizona; Vermont will get help from Maine; Virginia will get help from D.C. and Maryland; Wyoming will get help from Colorado.
That would just leave these ten states without ballot status: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas. It is possible that Alaska can do its own petition, but not likely; it needs 3,128 signatures by August 6.
What about the residency requirement in CT. That is what kept the Constitution Party from getting enough help.
My understanding is that some folks from Minnesota are planning to make an effort in North Dakota, assuming the Minnesota petition goes smoothly enough.
Even in states with laws like Connecticut, outsiders can legitimately help. They can ask people to sign and put the clipboard in front of the voter, as long as a Connecticut resident is watching.
It just goes to show how stupid these laws are, though, that require the “witness” to live in-state.
The AK Green Party is so unorganized I find it sad. I offered to help with collecting signatures but no one wanted to help organize and no one else seemed interested in volunteering; my efforts therefore will go towards Nader.
I hope the Green Party in New York “…can handle their own ballot access…” better than they did in 2004 when they didn’t get the needed number of signatures to appear on the ballot.
Actually, the Green Party did get on the statewide ballot in New York in 2004, but the petition that succeeded just had the U.S. Senate candidate listed, not the presidential candidate. The fact that the 2008 Green v-p candidate is a New Yorker will certainly help this year.
The national party is still, of course, collecting funds to assist in providing stipends for volunteers, paying travel costs, printing, etc.
Please make a donation or volunteer for the national Ballot Access Committee at http://www.gp.org/committees/ballot. Thanks!
im still going to probably vote for nader but im excited the greens at least have a plan
If this works, it will be great!
they will loss a lot of votes in Georgia by not being on ballot. McKinney would of got a large number of votes in her old district.
I have seen no indication that the Green Party collected or event attempted the 33,000 signatures for Indiana ballot access which were due June 30th. That drops it to 39 states. I suspect there may be other states helping neighbors because their access is impossible rather than complete.
Richard – As the old saying goes, you show me somebody who barely lost, and I’ll show you a loser. Yes, the Greens were on the ballot for many offices in the state, but not for President, which is specifically what your article was referring to, and what I was responding to in my post. The best they were able to do for their Presidential candidate was to get him labeled as an official write in candidate. That got him all of 138 votes. This was shameful considering that at the time of the election, they had slightly over 41,000 enrolled Greens in the State and only needed 15,000 signatures to get Cobb on the ballot.
The Greens failed to get Cobb on the New York ballot in 2004 because most New York Greens refused to petition for him. Many of the people — particularly in New York — who did not support Cobb in 2004 are supporting McKinney in 2008. So we can expect a better effort there this year.
As for the write-in votes, those numbers are incomplete. New York City (with almost half the state’s population) and several other counties declined to count the votes for any of the certified write-in candidates.
As to comment #11, Indiana is listed in the 10 hopeless states in the post, so it’s still 40, not 39.
It’s not the first time a party has done that. The Constitution Party did the same thing when it was just getting started in 1992. Also, both Indiana and Georgia allow write-ins and there should be a good turnout.
Eric – I’m not so sure about NYC not counting Cobb’s write-in votes. A couple months after the election when NY certified the vote and announced the totals, I noticed that in my county, the Constitution Party candidate didn’t receive any votes. I filed a complaint with my county election board which went right to the State BOE. In addition, I was informed by the then state affiliate of the Constitution Party that they filed a lawsuit because they noticed the same thing happened in other counties. I lost track of the suit but after about a year, amended returns were filed on the NYSBOE website and the write-in vote total for both Peroutka and Cobb were increased. Somebody went back and did a recount. How do you know it wasn’t NYC? You said yourself most of the Greens didn’t even want to pass a petition around for Cobb, so why would they do a write-in vote? In addition, unless it’s for a candidate who is extremely popular, not that many voters go out of their way to write someone’s name in. Since Nader was also on two lines on the ballot (his own line and the Independence Party line), it would have been easier to just pull the lever under Nader’s name. That’s probably why he ended up with so few write-in votes.
Now as for getting McKinney on the ballot, I sincerely hope they succeed. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that it was a shoddy performance on the part of the NYS Greens to get their candidate on the ballot. They had over 41,000 registered Greens in the State. Even if only 1,000 people actively sought names, which is only about 2.4% of the registered Greens, they would have only needed 15 names per person. Okay, 30 names per person if you wanted to make it challenge proof. If each of these 1,000 people can’t find 30 family and friends, then they aren’t trying very hard. Heck, I’m passing the petition for Barr and I haven’t even gone door to door yet and I have 50 signatures just from family, friends and co-workers. All in all, it was a shining example of how not to get your national candidate on the state ballot.