On October 27, the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office reversed course and accepted Frank Moore’s write-in filing for president. Last week that office had said that the U.S. Constitution bars a team (of a presidential candidate and a vice-presidential candidate) from running if both members of the team live in the same state. That interpretation has now been dropped. The 12th amendment only stops such a team from receiving the electoral votes of their own home state.
Frank Moore is not on the ballot on any state, but he has qualified as a write-in presidential candidate in 25 states, probably a record. He also campaigns diligently. He and his campaign team have been working on getting write-in status for nine months. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Congrats to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office for recognizing their error. I suppose the end result is a little publicity for Mr Moore’s campaign. Since Minnesota is one of your states with a long democratic (as opposed to Democratic) record its good to see they have not blotted their copy-book.
In Minnesota you can file for office as a write-in candidate, something like 24 or 48 hours prior to the election and its a pretty simple procedure of filing out a form.
Not that it should matter legally, but Moore and his VP both seem like fairly intelligent, nice and decent people, from the few public speeches I have heard from them. (There is one poorly filmed third party debate on Youtube).
I think that Moore used to be heavily involved with organized labor and the Democratic Party. His VP, if I recall, was involved with the Peace and Freedom Party, that endorsed Nader.
It is somewhat odd that the Socialist Party presidential candidate is not actually on the ballot,
I sometimes wonder if all the Socialist parties might want to consider either helping each other out with ballot access or getting behind one Socialist party candidate.
For example, in MN the SWP managed to get their presidential candidate on the ballot, but their US Senate candidate exists only as write-in.
I been trying to drum up some interest in electoral reform in Minnesota and the Dakotas, but will very little luck.
ETJB — the Socialist Party candidate is Brian Moore; Frank Moore is a performance artist from California. Brian Moore and his running mate Stewart Alexander should qualify for write-in status in Minnesota as well, if they have not already. They collected some (1000?) signatures in Minnesota, but not enough to get on the ballot.
Although I have limited information about this, around the spring or summer of 2007, the Socialist Party did attempt to contact other socialist parties and organizations about working together more co-operatively in the 2008 elections. Only the Peace and Freedom Party and the Freedom Socialist Party responded, both positively.