On October 27, the New York State Court of Appeals, the highest state court in New York, agreed with the mid-level court that Gigi Bowman should be on the November 4 ballot. She is the Libertarian nominee for State Senate, 5th district. The Libertarian Party is not a qualified party in New York, so it had to collect 3,000 valid signatures to get her on the ballot.
Her Republican opponent had challenged her petition. Even after the challenger lost in the mid-level court, he appealed to the State Court of Appeals, notwithstanding that the election was only eleven days away. The case is Wilson v Bowman, 2014-1108.
Is this Republican under the believe the Libertarian will take votes away from him, therefore attempting to get her removed from ballot?
This is what it seems like. The poor Libertarian has got to spend her time and money to fight to stay on the ballot, let alone fight to get her message out to the voters.
Of course he appealed! It eats up campaign time.
Yes. Plurality elections do encourage such tactics and the Libertarians aren’t alone.
The Libertarian Party, like most others, use a highly divisive psychology and so their candidates and elected “leaders” are prone to promoting inflammatory divisive, us vs. them, “my way or no way” types of rhetoric.
Fortunately, the 9th USA Parliament is able to easily identify and attract the best Libertarian team players.
If we want a new way, a new direction in politics where people promote unity and team work then we must work for it whenever we’re given the chance.
Neither the fusion system in NY, the NY Libertarian Party and candidates, all political parties in NY, and for that matter, all single-winner election systems, nor first-past-the-post and other inferior voting systems can nurture the teamwork that the people desperately need in the USA.
You’ll see a continuation of the dysfunctions and breakdowns of elections in all states and parties until these problems are remedied.
The 9th USA Parliament has been doing it right for 19 years, working against the grain of all those mentioned above.
We’re able to unite with anyone who is open to learning about this new unity psychology that we sustain. That way we as a team can move towards vital improvements in election law.
But should you brush off the invitations, as the Libertarians in NY have done time after time, then you’ll only invite more opposition, conflict and hostility with your campaigns.
Check out the best way to unite and project unity here:
http://www.usparliament.org
These tactics aren’t only being used by Gigi’s opponents but the same frivolous litigation is used by the Libertarians themselves all the time.
This sort of fighting back and forth in courts.
When people start using the court of public opinion by being examples of a good team players, working for the good of the whole before, during and after elections, then the voters may respond more favorably with support during the course of time.
Women in particular are the targets of such attacks by the meanest males who are far more aggressive, arrogant, mean-spirited and physically bigger.
That’s one reason why we then we have fewer women in politics.
All of us in politics continually suffer the consequences of such conflicts.
So we must work more aggressively to remedy the problems.
Instead of continuing this back and forth fighting, blocking of free speech access for good candidates and political retaliations and divisions, we need to embrace a new way of doing politics and with much stronger effort.
It’s not about one candidate. No one person is more important than the team as whole. The team here is the voters of NY and all the political parties and independents.
In one analogy, we have a case where there are two generals with one bullet each in this NY district.
The scenario we want instead is five generals with one bullet each who can also be rotated in and out like five basketball players, verses one static general with one bullet.
But as long as the Libertarians insist on the former situation then that’s the situation they’ll continually find themselves in for the duration of time.
Gigi as a leader of the Libertarians needs to look in the mirror because she alone is responsible for her current situation, for “entering the battle mono e mono” and disregarding the team psychology for so many years as though it was irrelevant.
In team psychology she should question her own actions which placed her there trying to effect change and the sort of change she’s working towards.
And he probably will appeal again – this time to a federal court – with less than 3 days to go. Republicans will not stop at anything to keep off the ballots Libertarians or any candidate whom they feel will take votes away from them in November.
I hope this Republican gets clobbered in the election. Can hardly wait until Tuesday night to seek out the returns.
The best way to get proportional representation and/or ranked-choice voting is for minor parties and independent candidates to run strong campaigns, and lots of them. Only then will the major parties decide to support alternative voting systems. We can see this in Maine, as a statewide initiative for ranked-choice voting is about to be launched. This is only happening because this year’s gubernatorial race, and the 2010 gubernatorial race, saw winners with less than 40% of the vote.
Richard, I just don’t see how the Green and Libertarian Parties can recover from the current situation with Green and Libertarian Parties.
I’ve seen what’s been going down for the past 19 consecutive years and now your recommendations and strategy for proportional representation currently has no weight at all with me.
I’ll be sure to let you know when I ever change my mind.
RCV for Governor of Maine isn’t proportional representation. That only raises the threshold for all parties, attracts egotists to single-winner contests and provides a power base for the largest political civic group/party.
The 9th USA Parliament has been spot on and will continue to be, because we have the ability to be dynamic, think and vote as a team and to have the short memory required.
We can’t wait until you start learning how to play the game better starting November 5th, 2014.
Admittedly, I haven’t read the initiative proposed in Maine. But all indicators point to another disaster. If it goes the way I predict, there will be a great opportunity missed by implementing a faulty “RCV” system for Governor of Maine.
It even smells of “bait and switch” by the FairVote group. They’ve switched from the catch phrase IRV recently and are using RCV as the catch phase for the same system as far as I can tell. They’re still using the same psychology and won’t answer/return phone calls which smacks of continuing arrogance.
Then ten years down the road we’ll see the similar bad problems caused by that inferior system being used in SF and Oakland if they are indeed implementing the same one.