On March 4, a hearing will be held to determine if the Ohio Libertarian Party primary petitions for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General should be invalidated. Elections officials had already determined the petitions have enough valid signatures. The requirement for these petitions is 500 signatures, and any registered voter who didn’t vote in another party’s primary in 2012 can sign. However, there are restrictions on who can circulate such petitions. Out-of-state circulators can work on these petitions, but if the circulator is an Ohio resident, he or she must not have voted in the primary of another party. See this story. UPDATE: here is another story. The first version of this post said the hearing would be March 3, but the hearing was moved to March 4 due to weather.
Before the United States can become a free country again, we must get rid of all state and federal ballot access laws except those which punish fraud.
In the nineteenth century, almost anyone could get on the ballot. Now, the Republocrats devise laws which hinder alternate candidates and parties and them misuse them to entrap their enemies.
For life and liberty,
David Macko
Libertarian Candidate For Congress
Ohio US 14th District
http://www.mackoforliberty.org
Couldn’t we challenge the Republican petitions as well?
You say the hearing will be held on Mar 3 but the article you point to says “Tuesday” which would be the 4th. Which is it?
Good catch, June. I found a 2nd news story that says explicitly the hearing is Monday at 9 a.m., and linked to it. So the first story is probably wrong.
Another snow storm in Ohio–worst weather in 50+ years. Hearing delayed until Tuesday, March 4. Looks like basically the LP had about one month to get their candidates filed by February 5, 2014. The SB 193 issues, ban on out of state petitioners until the LP fought back on that in mid-November, and most importantly, the court challenge decision not coming until early January, put a hammer on any petitioning from all appearances. Why pay petitioners in November or December, if you don’t even know if you will win a court case. Save the money to get petition work done in the Spring and Summer to get party back on ballot for 2014–it would be a lot more money and a lot more signatures and still lose the 2014 Primary.
No wonder Ohio doesn’t have much third party success and hasn’t been on the ballot much in a long time.
Should read “… and then misuse them to entrap their enemies.”
Certainly, we could challenge them but we and our lawyers would need some basis to do so. The enemy (i.e. Republicans) have well paid attorneys to make sure every jot and tittle on the petitions is taken care of. That is the way their corrupt ballot access system was designed to work, against us and the people.
The hearing was originally scheduled for tomorrow, March 3. However, due to the six to twelve inches of global warming which is predicted for central Ohio today and tomorrow, it has been postponed to Tuesday, March 4.
DM
Thank you, LP Observer. I fixed the post to show the hearing is March 4.