The Maryland petition deadline for a party that wishes to obtain, or regain, its qualified status is not until August 2012. However, parties that were on the ballot in 2010 had been told that if they want their registered members to continue to be registered in those parties, the deadline for submitting that petition was January 7, 2011. In other words, if the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties want their registered members to continue to be registered in those parties, those parties had to rush their 2012 petition.
Now, however, Maryland elections officials have postponed that deadline to March 7, 2011. This postponement will be of most use to the Constitution Party, if it wishes to take advantage of it. The Green and Libertarian Parties had already complied with the January 7, 2011 deadline. The petition requires 10,000 valid signatures.
How many regimes have AD HOC made up stuff — i.e. are LAWLESS ???
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Maryland LP collected about 13-14 raw for a 10k valid requirement. This may be enough, but verification is an issue…among other things, they may disqualify names without a middle initial, something I have never encountered before anywhere.
We have not left yet and can get some more signatures if some money materializes quickly. Anyone reading can contribute at
https://co.clickandpledge.com/advanced/default.aspx?wid=23698
We are still here and could get more signatures, but the money to pay for them would have to be sent very quickly. We are not going to sit around in motels paying a lot of money and not working, or working and hoping that money will arrive later.
If readers would like to extend this project, we need to move quickly before we go off on other jobs which may well be in distant parts of the country.
Although they have until March 7 to get more signatures, but it would be a lot easier to get them while we are still here than to bring in us or other people in later.
We did have an 83% validity rate four years ago with the same people that worked this time, so we probably have enough signatures, but more would be good for insurance purposes.
Paulie,
Why don’t you go ahead and gather enough signatures to guarantee the success of your ballot drive? When I ran LP ballot drives, not one ballot drive ever failed. We got the necessary signatures by the deadline at the lowest possible cost, even if we had to wait to get paid, or even if some signatures were “free.” Petitioner payment rates have increased far ahead of the rate of inflation and to stop circulating and wait for money is unprofessional.
Why don’t you go ahead and gather enough signatures to guarantee the success of your ballot drive?
It costs about $100 a day to be on the road (motels, restaurants, gas, etc), and that’s if I don’t go out on the town at all.
Petitioner payment rates have increased far ahead of the rate of inflation
There are reasons for that. All post offices used to be open for petitioning. Not any more. Many more potential signers – and locations – are worried about identity theft. People are on cell phones a lot. Colleges and other public locations are far more apt to hassle us now with homeland security paranoia all over the place. Stores are harder to either get permission at or guerrilla than they used to be.
to stop circulating and wait for money is unprofessional
Professional petition companies don’t collect signatures and hope to maybe get paid some unspecified time later if they are lucky. Does your plumbing or electrical contractor do that? I don’t think so.
I have in fact done thousands of volunteer signatures – when I could afford to do them. Right now is not one of those times.
“Petitioner payment rates have increased far ahead of the rate of inflation”
This is not necessarily true at all. If anything, pay rates on petitions have stagnated or even gone down lately.
I’ve heard of petitions back in the 1990’s that paid the same or more than many petitions pay now. For instance, back in 1996 I know that petitions for Ross Perot’s Reform Party paid rates of $4 per signature in some places, in other places they paid $2 per signature. I also heard about a petition drive to place the Libertarian Party on the ballot in Alaska in 1992 which paid $2 per signature plus expenses (at least for the flights to Alaska). Another example is that there was an Indian Gaming ballot initiative petition back in 1998 that went up to $4 per signature.
“to stop circulating and wait for money is unprofessional”
Actually, that is the smart way to do business. If you are a pro petitioner and you agree to wait to get paid you are doing the proponent a favor, and I’ve found that in many instances favors are not appreciated and you may in fact end up getting screwed over inspite of doing somebody a favor.
“Well then … Says:
January 9th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Paulie,
Why don’t you go ahead and gather enough signatures to guarantee the success of your ballot drive?”
I think that there are likely already enough signatures for the Libertarian Party of Maryland to remain ballot qualified. However, if it turns out that more are needed they have until March 7th to turn in more signatures, so there is still plenty of time.
“It costs about $100 a day to be on the road (motels, restaurants, gas, etc), and that’s if I don’t go out on the town at all.”
Road expenses are a valid concern, but my road expenses are generally not as high as $100 per day.
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