UPDATE: It appears that the Maine town and county clerks are using their discretionary powers and are accepting the slightly late filing by the LP. The actual state deadline is August 15, so the petitions will still meet that more important deadline.
The Barr campaign petitions now have 5,520 signatures, which should be enough to make the 4,000 valid requirement.
Good luck, but I doubt it.
Here is my question: How was the LP/Barr campaign NOT all over this?
Here’s something I don’t understand.
Almost all LP focus and money appears to go to ballot access for Barr/Root. So how is it that now both WV and ME came so close yet failed?
And now another lawsuit?
If the officials fail to accept and certify the late signatures, LP officials plan to go to court.
I wonder who is meant by ‘LP officials’? State folks? National? Barr campaign? I guess I’m mostly curious about where the money for the court action might be coming from.
At this rate the Barr campaign may yet appear on less ballots than the Nader campaign.
Good. I hope that the whole stupid state government gets taken to court. I don’t want to have the only people on the ballot be completely unacceptable.
New Jersey has a requirement of 800 signatures to get on the ballot. Why Maine needs 4000 I’ll never know.
“Why Maine needs 4000 I’ll never know.”
Oh, come on Glaivester. You know full well that it’s a totally arbitrary number concocted by the Republicrat duopoly to discourage competition just like West Virginia’s (much lower population than NJ) 15,118 signature requirement.
Or Oklahoma’s even lower population requiring 40,000 sigs.
What a really logical and intelligent information stream. Richard Winger and all of the bloggers could, should, would feel very good about this sterling example of people power!
The reason why all this happened was Stavros Mendros was running the campaign. Mr Mendros has been involved in all kind sleaze activities in Maine. He has previously been convicted of initiative fraud in Maine.
The Barr campaign gets what they deserve by hiring someone like him.
If they can’t run campaigns correctly how could they ever run the government?
They bought in out of state petitioners at the end and then didn’t turn the petitions in on time. Rumor has it some these people may have records too.
The state may not accept the petitions from the towns or they may be challenged.
There is a God!
THIS IS THE BEST NEWS I’VE HEARD ALL WEEK!!!
Thank you Jesus. Thank you Budha. Thank you Yaweh. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
If Winger’s information is correct here, that means the LP will be on 47 state ballots, most likely 48.
Let’s see…4000/5520 = 0.72
I hope Barr gets on the ballot, but they seem to have a pretty narrow margin for error here.
Not only should the Barr Campaign have been solidly on the ballot with time to spare in Maine, they should have been listed as “Libertarian Party” candidates, instead of “Independent Candidates” in AL and several other states, like SD. Of course, this would have required the LP to hire a Political Director that was accountable for his actions, and not simply someone (Sean Haugh) who is run like a puppet by a vengeance-crazed Scott Kohlhaas. It would also require a hiring process for petitioners, as well as a documentation process regarding breach of contract for said petitioners. As it stands now, Haugh is a the red queen who simply cries “off with their heads” like a tempermental 5 year old. (This happens a lot!)
In all fairness, if you intend to battle the police state electorally, it also takes a person like Bill Redpath, Chris Bennet, or Wes Benedict to run the petition drive itself. Otherwise, our enemy the state will simply enter the equation and smear whomever is doing the work with false allegations, and the local LP will then trip over itself to feed that person to the wolves, since they typically don’t understand the ugliness of politics.
I’ll be glad if Barr is on the ballot due to the reasonable attitude of the Maine government with regard to their petitioning requirements. ..But that lenience should not have been necessary, and would not have been necessary, if the LP had run their petition drives properly. The increased cost of the drives to the donors is loss of ballot access, and 50 cents extra per signature to petition drive “coordinators” who have the ‘virtue’ of never having been defrauded by Kohlhaas, Cory, or Haugh. (They also have lower validity rates, and higher raw signature counts, which suits Kohlhaas and Haugh just fine. After all, they don’t give a rat’s ass about anything but the appearance of professionalism, and making money from the perpetually benighted LP donors.)
By Haugh’s definition of “coordinator” (which has nothing to do with validity, and everything to do with production), I am a coordinator. Of course, when I coordinated on the ground in TX in 2004, I was simply paid more and called a “petitioner”.
If only I knew how much titles meant to the LP bureaucracy! Scott Kohlhaas didn’t produce in TX in 2004, but he was simply flown home.
I produced a few signatures less per day than orally “suggested” in WV, on a drive noone else wanted to work on. I recruited a team of Libertarian petitioners and tried to bring them into WV. (People that also wanted to go to Maine and CT after WV). Cory and Verney prevented this from happening.
As of now, they still haven’t paid me what they owe me for my work in WV, and are deliberately trying to screw me on expenses, since they know I haven’t turned in my rental car yet (If I return the car tomorrow, they will be sticking me with $2,000 in penalties and overdraft costs).
All of this, of course is a direct breach of the oral contract. …But I’m to blame for WV’s failure, because I got a few fewer signatures per day than they suggested was “good production”. Ironically, while they could leave incessant messages for me to turn in my work daily (as if that would have somehow saved their WV drive, by forcing me to drive to Cross Lanes from Charleston every night in the middles of my petitioning), Shane Cory couldn’t deliver a message from Austin Peterson that the K-Mart I had suggested he try to gain permission at had agreed to allow me to petition there.
…LOL! So I had a perfect location the entire last week, and Cory —who was desperate for signatures couldn’t even inform me about it.— (Although he could several leave messages for me telling me to “Turn in my rental car NOW,” and that I was “fired” …even though he had breached approximately 10 parts of our oral contract …including the promise to email me a written contract, as soon as I left Chicago for WV.)
Treating longtime libertarian activist petitioners like they are scum of the earth, and hiring non-libertarian mercenaries for more money than the longtime libertarian activists charge is not behavior that is likely to win friends for the LP. Then again, maybe the goal is to alienate the existing LP members, and run the LP like the Republican Party II.
…I know that that would make fascist Republican lunatics like Eric Dondero happy! (Maybe then we could call it the disgruntled, fired, ex-employees of actual Libertarians Party. …But only if Shane Cory signed up too!)
If the LP ever wants to be taken seriously, they should fire the criminals that they have on salary (Scott Kohlhaas, Sean Haugh, Shane Cory), or at bare minimum, hire them as independent contractors (as all petitioners are hired). Assuming they do the latter, they should have clear and concise contracts that denote exactly what work is to be performed, and how it is to be performed, and what would constitute a breach of contract (like perhaps failing to gain ballot access in a State that was entrusted to them, with them as the supreme and unquestionable authority).
Right now, the LP expects a lot more of its non-libertarian government (transparency, accountability) than it expects of itself.
…Not a good position to be in, philosophically speaking.
Jake,
Incorrect on Alabama, except in an ideal sense. It takes ~ 8x as many signatures for full party status here.
Chris Bennett, Jake? It was Al Vetter who ran the successful Illinois LP ballot drive that handed in 49,000 signatures, not Bennett. My information was that Bennett was a backroom paper shuffler. The real work on that drive was done by Al Vetter, Ken Prazek and a few others in Springfield and Chicago.
BTW, it’s a shame you couldn’t assist the IL LP drive even though it was in your own backyard.
Hey Jake, maybe the LP National leadership treated you badly, because you weren’t delivering the sigs. You didn’t live up to your past reputation. Illinois LP drive, arguably the very toughest of them all for the LP this year, and you were AWOL. And you friggin’ live right there in Chicago.
You told me that you were averaging “90 signatures” a day in West Virginia. Well, a source has since told me that that 90 a day number was actually only 90 a day when you were out petitioning.
Apparently, you decided to hide out in your hotel room a few days, not answering your door.
(I seem to recall you pulled precisely this same trick in Butte, MT a couple years ago.)
90 signatures a day is poor to begin with. 90 sigs every two or three days is downright pitiful.
CORRECTION: Those “longtime libertarian activists” you speak of Jake, are actually Leftwing Anarchists, and not at all “libertarians.” You yourself lean decidedly Left, and are increasingly shrill and moving away from any libertarian leanings you may have once had.
Hey Jake, those Leftwing Anarchists that you are so fond of, former petitioners for the LP, are wholly aligned with the likes of Cindy Sheehan, George Soros, Daily Kos and the Far, Far Leftwing. These are the very same people who have blocked us libertarian petitioners all over the country, or hire blockers, as recently in Michigan with the Leon Drolet/MI Taxpayer’s Alliance Recall efforts, the Ward Connerly sponsored anti-affirmative action drives, and the Paul Jacob-backed 2006 Property Rights/Eminent Domain initiatives.
Oh, come to think of it, you yourself were blocked by 12 of these Leftwing Thugs in Butte, MT. And now you’re defending them?
What gives???
Jake, you are largely to blame for the failure of the West Virginia drive. You have to live with that. That will haunt you for the rest of your life.
Fact: You had one of the greatest reputations as a petitioner for libertarian causes in the Nation from your efforts from 2004 to 2006. Back then you could easily get 400 sigs a day, some days near 500. You used to smoke my ass. Same day I’d get 350, you’d get back to the hotel with 475.
It was entirely reasonable for Shane Cory, Sean Haugh, Scott Kohlhaas, Bill Redparth and others to assume that you would deliver similar numbers, and thus you were worth the investment of a flight from Chicago and a week’s hotel room.
Imagine their surprise when you only delivered 90 every two or three days or so.
Jake, what was your total count of signatures from you for WV?
Did you even bust 500 in two weeks?
The convention should have been earlier and the ballot access drives should have started earlier. This holds for both the LP and the Constitution Party.
One of the problems I’ve noticed is a lack of clearly defined expectations and accountability on the part of petitioners and the Party/campaign. Is there some reason we don’t use a standard contract, modified for particular ballot drives?
That way there is at least an objective measurement of performance on both parts.
Excuse me Eric?
I wasn’t a paper shuffler, I sacrificed my days off from work and school to spend many hours at the State Board of Elections to do validity rates on all petitions, including YOURS! In fact, if it wasn’t for my expediency concerning low validity rates with a few petitioning crews out of Chicago, we would have lost more money than the $10000 lost due to BAD signatures. In fact, NATIONAL acted on MY suggestion to fire them. Even though I hate you…I did compliment you on being the best petitioner during the ballot access drive. But you trust your second hand information before you ask me about what went on here in Illinois. You have my e-mail address, you know how to contact me.
Also Dondero, Jake could not assist us in Illinois because he petitioned for Ron Paul during the primary and by law a petitioner can not petition for two different parties in the same election cycle. I’m most positive that Jake would have helped us if he could.
Some of us are not interested in Libertarian Party personal disputes. Why not do this somewhere else, if it has to be done at all?
It’s not that I don’t know how to contact you Mr. Bennett, it’s simply I do not wish to have any contact with you whatsoever. You are not a friend of liberty.
Most libertarians I know would disagree with you Eric about Mr. Bennett. At least he doesn’t call for racist policies often stated on your stupid wanna-be radio show about Muslims. Libertarians aren’t racist but you are, therefore you are NO libertarian!
By the way, Chris Bennett saved the IL LP thousands of dollars in payments that would have gone to mercenary petitioners who were attempting to defraud the LP. Ironically, by “firing and blacklisting” longtime libertarian activists, the LP (Sean Haugh, Scott Kohlhaas, Eric Dondero, etc…) brought those mercenaries on themselves. This is documented fact. After that, Chris Bennett defended Dondero’s reputation as a petitioner, even though Dondero was slagging him on this board.
Wow.
It’s good to see that a poisonous snake like Dondero bites everyone equally, including his defenders. I guess that’s what makes him someone you cannot trust, under any circumstances. If he’s not a paid agent provacateur, he is every bit as bad as one.
BTW: When I called up Dondero in regard to his lies on this board, he admitted that he had told Cory that I was “hard to work with” before I went to West Virginia. Since Cory isn’t a libertarian (he’s a Republican), he believed Dumbdero more than the other libertarian party petitioners he talked to, and failed to allow me to hire enough petitioners to place the party on the ballot in WV. Dumbdero must have told him not to hire me as a “coordinator”. (Coordinator is an artificial designation used to denote someone who does no petitioning work, but instead only hires the petitioners. The two jobs need not be separate.)
This is the best evidence yet that I have for Dumbdero being an agent provacateur. After all, Barr was cost ballot access in WV because of the duo of Dondero and Cory.
And if that wasn’t the case, then why did COry refuse to bring in another pro petitioner on July 15th? What possible reason was there for that? Over a difference of $150 in travel?
I should have known I had been slandered when Cory told me “Jake, You know you’re difficult to deal with” and later, in the same conversation “Eric Dondero told me that you’re a great petitioner”.
The mindless fucker, Eric Dondero told him I would do 400 valid signatures per day! And since Cory had never run a petition drive before, he ignored me telling him: “A pro petitioner can be expected to do around 100 signatures per day”.
Behind the scenes, Eric the halfwit has actually done quite a bit of damage to the libertarian movement. We might want to actually question whether he is perhaps employed to sow unreason into our little movement. The idea is less far-fetched by the day.
After all, we know Dondero was a traitor to Ron Paul, whom many libertarians consider to be a rare libertarian example of an exception to the corruption of Washington DC.
It should be noted that Dondero is completely insane, and that he is a longtime friend of Scott Kohlhaas. It should be noted that Dondero began to consider himself a libertarian because Nick Dunbar told him that he was one, after he replied that he was “Socially tolerant and fiscally conservative”. Without that dumbed-down definition of libertarian, we might have all avoided dealing with the unphilosophical hassle that is Dondorko.
Trouble is, Eric has twice the energy of most activists and half the brains.
Eric Dondero – The guys name is Val Vetter, not AL Vetter. Thats all we need to know about Dondero’s credibility on this issue when he can’t even the guys name right he professes to know enough about to form an infromed opinion. And the only thing Val Vetter has run in Illinois is to run great activists out of the party while LP Illinois has sunk to all time lows in the number of candidates they even try to get on the ballot. Val Vetter has set the libertarian movement back by a decade in Illinois.
As for Chris, Libertarian Vice President, Bennett. How did you pay for that college degree you brag about? Government money holding a gun to our heads?
Jake Witmer has half the brains just as he accuses Dondero of since he already knew the above was fact.
“Illinois LP drive, arguably the very toughest of them all for the LP this year, and you were AWOL. And you friggin’ live right there in Chicago.”
…Eric “Master Shake” Dondero goes to new depths of blithering. I was hired by Ron Paul campaign earlier in 2007 in IL, so I was legally forbidden from working for the IL LP in 2008.
The reason why it was so hard for the LP in Chicago? Probably because the gutless and brainless LP under Haugh refused to hire several longtime LP petitioners. Had this not been their official stance, the IL LP would have had several more signatures than it got from fascist “Republican” mercenaries like Eric Dondero.
Eric should be familiar with Ron Paul, because Ron Paul is his former boss, and a real libertarian (unlike Eric). Because Ron Paul is a real libertarian, he was once forced to fire Eric (who claims to have been his “senior” aide). This abrupt downward change in career led to Eric becoming a big promoter of Giuliani’s deservedly failed 2008 bid for the presidency.
Eric admitted (even after he was fired by Paul) that working for Ron Paul was the best job he ever had. (I guess Eric’s foul temper would not allow such “good” employment.)
…Apparently the stink of hiring someone who was a vocal proponent of “Rudoph Giuliani for President” wasn’t too much for the likes of Sean Haugh or Scott Kohlhaas. (Remember, these are the same guys who fired and blacklisted Andy Jacobs, who has a stellar track record of libertarian employment.)
I guess that “Master Shake” would like to forget how he told Bruce Cohen and I (early 2008) that “gun rights aren’t important”, when he was pimping New York’s openly-fascist, anti-free-speech mayor. Can everyone here at BAN do “Master Shake” a favor and purge your short term memories?
…It would really help him fit the facts into his BS version of reality. It would also help him manage the despicable fictions he incessantly spouts online.
C’mon and “turn the other cheek”, will you? Eric is safely a thousand miles away, and totally insulated from reality. …Just “agree to forget” with him, and maybe he’ll shut his stinkin’ yapper!
BTW: Eric is a leftist. You know how I know? …Because he listens to the Dead Kennedys, and Jello Biafra is a leftist. Therefore, Eric must also be a leftist.
Oh no, wait! I don’t have to use bizarro-logic! My brain works properly!
…Too bad (mentally) poor Eric doesn’t have that option!
“Jake, you are largely to blame for the failure of the West Virginia drive.” In Dondero-fantasyland I am. “You have to live with that.” I also have to live with getting payed late, and getting paid a fraction of what I am owed, because of your lies Eric, and I will never forget that. “That will haunt you for the rest of your life.” As I will haunt your inflated reputation, for the rest of your life.
“Fact: You had one of the greatest reputations as a petitioner for libertarian causes in the Nation from your efforts from 2004 to 2006.” Bullshit. I had a good reputation, which you claimed was the best, because you wanted a tool in your tool belt, as an agent provacateur. “Back then you could easily get 400 sigs a day, some days near 500.” And I still can, and still do. “You used to smoke my ass.” No, Eric, I unfortunately used to smell your ass, since I have had the displeasure of standing in the same room with you. You really should wash up better. “Same day I’d get 350, you’d get back to the hotel with 475.” –Because you stop to talk with other ranting “dittoheads” and you only carry two boards with you while you work, so anytime a group of more than two willing signers approaches, your dumb ass sits there looking stupid while the first two signers take their time signing.
“It was entirely reasonable for Shane Cory, Sean Haugh, Scott Kohlhaas, Bill Redparth and others to assume that you would deliver similar numbers, and thus you were worth the investment of a flight from Chicago and a week’s hotel room.” First of all, Eric/shitforbrains, you got all the details wrong. Redpath reacted with obvious surprise when I relayed your statements to him. (Because Redpath is intelligent, and uncorrupted. Of course, your dumb ass spelled it “redparth”, so perhaps “redparth” is some fictional creature that lives in Donderoland, along with the Dodo and other flightless birds.) Shane Cory and Sean Haugh don’t count, because they are two people who have been promoted beyong their level of competence (McDonald’s fry cooks), and Kohlhaas is a scam artist and an oldtime buddy of yours.
“Imagine their surprise when you only delivered 90 every two or three days or so.”
This is a simple lie (slander), and Eric knows it. My daily AVERAGE (averages are a difficult concept for Eric Dondero and Shane Cory) was 87 signatures per day. That means that for the 19 days of the drive (not counting the 2 entire days that Shane Cory sat on his ass without giving me the proper petition), I collected 87 signatures per day.
“Jake, what was your total count of signatures from you for WV?” 1,660 signatures collected, turned in, and not paid for.
“Did you even bust 500 in two weeks?”
Yes, I did, Eric “shitforbrains” Dondero.
Eric’s posts on this board indicate that he is a paid “agent provacateur” in the employ of the Republican Party. He is disseminating information that he knows to be false, lying, sowing seeds of doubt, and giving conflicting information to various people.
As always, he takes the occasional correct position, simply to get people to sympathize with him. He is a parasite of the worst variety, and anyone who deals with him in any way other than destructively, regrets it.
Remember that you will be quoted out of context, or flatly have things you never said attributed to you, if you deal with Eric Dondero in any way.
Hearing what Eric has to say on this board almost makes me dislike Shane Cory less, since Shane was obviously played by him. I put the likelihood between slim and none that I would ever work with Shane again, but if he believes anything that Dondero tells him, he has at least a partial excuse for his irrational actions in WV. I have no doubt that Eric Dondero gave him continual poisonous advice during the course of that drive.
Everyone here should sit up and take notice: Eric’s advice in WV to a newbie petition drive coordinator (Shane Cory) caused WV to fail.
Simply by telling Shane that I was likely to get 400 signatures per day, Eric set Shane up to fail. Who knows how much of Shane’s other stupid actions were also “encouraged”/”planted” by Dondero?
Dondero is slime. Poisonous slime. Reliable people who know Eric will verify this.
Jeff Trigg
Bruce Cohen
Most of the Texas LP
Myself
Andy Jacobs
Eric is temporarily useful to people who have titles but don’t deserve them by any stretch of the imagination (Sean Haugh, Scott Kohlhaas, etc…). I wouldn’t doubt that they were also fed a load of shit from him.
I think that Eric qualifies as an anti-social personality. He continually lies, and has no problem doing so. If any statement serves his goals, then he believes it is justified, true or not.
Noone should ever trust Eric Dondero 1/100th the distance they can throw him. (I said 1/100th, because Eric is a little guy. Mother nature shorted him, literally, on both height and intellect.)
Eric Dondero is almost certainly collecting a paycheck from someone associated with the mainstream Republican Party, for the purposes of destroying the Libertarian Party from within.
Eric desires to attend the Libertarian Party National Convention in 2010 and 2012. He knows that he has a terrible reputation, and that anyone that he hangs out with will be considered toxic. It is my belief that he will act as if he is a friend of Wayne Root there, if/when Wayne seeks the nomination again.
Hey, Dondero rationalizes: “The Libertarian Party is really just a non-religious version of the Republican Party”. The trouble with this blinkered “thinking” is that as soon as the Republican Party runs a non-religious candidate, Dondero advocates the destruction of the LP.
Again: ERIC DONDERO IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.
-Jake Witmer