On May 18, the Hawaii Constitution Party obtained blank petition forms from the Hawaii Elections Office, and is in the process of distributing them to activists. Any party that is not on the ballot now needs 692 signatures by April 2010.
Currently, the only ballot-qualified party in Hawaii besides the Republican and Democratic Parties is the Libertarian Party. The Green Party, and Ralph Nader’s Independent Party, are free to start a petition drive in Hawaii for 2010 now, if they wish.
These parties only need 692 signatures by November 2010? Why the hell aren’t they doing something? I mean, if there’s just one person in Hawaii for each party they could probably qualify them for the ballot.
692 people is not alot. You can get ANY party ballot-qualified.
Hawaii is very prone to invalidate signatures on petitions. Generally half the signatures are deemed invalid. So the petition isn’t as easy as it looks.
As some one who has done it before – it takes quite a bit of work for one person to get 500-600 valid signiture for a petition. It of course can be done but it takes time and effort.
I wonder just how many sub-rules there are in getting those 692 signatures? By county? By district? Which further information do those signing have to provide? Ect, ect.
Hawaii has no distribution requirement for its petition. But, signers must provide either their birthday (including year, which many people are sensitive about), or the last 4 digits of their social security number.
Richard – Thanks for posting this.
We will be petitioning, soon, to get the Independent Party of Hawaii back on the ballot for 2010.
As someone who helped with the last two Hawaii petition drives for Nader, 692 is more then we should need to collect, but since we have nearly a year, I anticipate collecting enough valid signatures by the end of this year to qualify (April 1, 2010 deadline). In 2008 we waited until the last minute, but were able to qualify with the help of a couple of national Nader petitioners, a Green Party petitioner, and about 15 locals. And we did learn last year that HI registered voters can sign petitions for more than one party.
Michael – It doesn’t matter which county or district the signatures come from. Political party’s are required to have at least one party officer from each of the 4 counties tho. Petition signers provide their name, physical address at which they are registered to vote (no mailing addresses) and date of birth. There is a place for social security # but that is NOT required by law. My experience with the state of HI is that they can be picky, but since we can turn petitions in as we fill them out we will be able to know exactly where we stand in the process until we get to the magic #.
[a] More parties, candidates, activists means more democracy!
[b] My telephone conversations with Hawaii Independent Party types [2002, 2005] was always predicated that they were ballot access.
—– Donald Raymond Lake
Richard – I believe the date of birth is required. It’s the SSN that’s not required. I’ll confirm this next time I talk with the state.
Richard – I received an email from the HI office of Elections stating that “date of birth is required no matter what” on the petitions.