Ohio held its primary for all office on March 6. It is the earliest congressional primary for any state, in 2012. Some Libertarian and Green Party congressional candidates were on their own party’s primary ballot for various U.S. House seats. Others had write-in campaigns in their own primaries, because they did not succeed in getting the needed signatures to appear on their own party’s primary ballots.
One Libertarian, Chris Kalla, did receive enough write-in votes in his primary to advance to the November election. He was running in the 4th U.S. House district. He needed 25, and the Secretary of State’s web page says he received 26.
However, the three minor party members seeking a U.S. Senate nomination did not receive enough votes for nomination. They needed 500 write-ins. Libertarian member John Fockler got 407 write-ins. Two Greens were also running for U.S. Senate as write-ins in the Green primary. Joseph DeMare got 191 and Anita Rios got 43. It is possible that not all ballots containing write-in votes have been counted yet, and also some provisional ballots haven’t been counted yet either, so there may be a slight chance that eventually Fockler will be credited with 500 write-ins.
Ohio should adopt something more like Texas, where small parties nominate by convention. Instead of automatically qualifying, a party would qualify based on participation in its nominating process.
Since the Ohio primary includes non-partisan races, they could let voters affiliate with a minor party at the primary, hand them the time and location of the convention, and the non-partisan ballot. Voters could also affiliate by showing up at a convention, or by signing a petition.
The parties could structure their conventions however they wanted, as long as were based on pre-filed rules and public notices.
The filing deadline could be around the 1st of August. Qualification might be based on 1% of total participation in nominating events. Since participation would be based on individual voters, qualification could be more granular for parties that don’t qualify at the state level.
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This is Joseph DeMare, Green Party Candidate for Senate in Ohio. We are refusing to concede this election.
There are numerous irregularities in the vote count in Ohio. Many counties which are reporting votes for me on their county Board of Elections websites are simply not included in the Secretary of State’s count.
I have been contacted by Greens in ten counties who say that, even though they voted for me, the Secretary of State’s count says 0 for their county.
We have to wait until March 27th for the “official” count, but the Secretary of State’s office has confirmed that the numbers they are reporting are low.
There were numerous fluctuations in the vote count which made it look as if the SoS’s numbers were simply made up. For example, on election night, one of our candidates for Congress, Elaine Mastromatteo, was credited with 1,200 votes in Cuyahoga County. That later dropped to 51.
There are also counties with a significant number of write in votes for U.S. Senate are recorded with 0 attributed to either Anita Rios or myself.
We are not Democrats. We will not simply accept inaccurate vote counts without a fight.