The newspapers in Vermont are now covering the fact that the Working Families Party is about to qualify itself in Vermont. See this article in the Burlington Free Press.
Party qualification is very easy in Vermont. No petition is required. A group must show the Secretary of State that it has town committees in at least ten towns. The only difficult part of the process is that it must be completed by the end of an odd year. In 2007 the Green Party failed to qualify under this process, and as a result Cynthia McKinney did not appear on the Vermont 2008 ballot. Even though the Green Party failed to qualify as a party for the 2008 ballot, it would have been free to submit a petition for McKinney by September 2008, bearing 1,000 valid signatures, but it didn’t use that process either.
The Working Families is already ballot-qualified in New York, Oregon, South Carolina, and Delaware. It is also qualified in Connecticut for all U.S. House seats and many legislative seats and local offices. In the past it was a qualified party in Massachusetts, but it lost that status in 2008 because it didn’t run any statewide nominees and it did not get its registration up to 1% of the state registration total.
This is very interesting. Especially since there is already fusion in Vermont. I’m wondering if there are going to be any Working Family/Progressive candidates?
Well, considering many of the Progressive candidates that are elected to the State House are Progressive/Democratic candidates, I don’t particularly see how adding the Working Families ballot line into the mix will necessarily change anything.
But maybe it’s that the Vermont Progressives are actually somewhat of an independent party, and this is annoying the Democrats.