The Arizona Green Party will have two candidates in its presidential primary, Jill Stein and Kent Mesplay. In 2012, when anyone could get on any party’s presidential primary in Arizona just by asking, the Green Party had six candidates.
The Libertarian Party told the Arizona Secretary of State that it does not want a presidential primary.
In the Arizona Democratic presidential primary, six candidates qualified: Hillary Clinton, Rocky De La Fuente, Henry Hewes, Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Michael Steinberg.
So what’s the new requirement this cycle, Richard? What else did candidates have to do to get on the Green primary ballot?
They had to either show they are on the presidential primary ballot in 2 other states, or submit 500 signatures of registered voters (who could be in any party for the Green candidates).
Thanks! I guess the follow-up questions would be how many states had Green Presidential primaries at all, and how many of those had candidate lists in time to qualify for Arizona. . . .
In 2016, there are Green Party presidential primaries in Arizona, California, D.C., Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio. Probably no Green will qualify to be on the Ohio Green presidential primary ballot, though.
Will be interesting to see how many Greens actually vote. The Greens are very weak party in Arizona even compared to the Libs. They actually don;t have enough members so they always have to sign petitions just to get on the ballot.
In 2012’s Green Party presidential preference election in Arizona (the state claims it is *not* a primary), there were 573 ballots cast; the party registration was then 4,925, so it was an 11.6% turnout. But if you count up the votes of the six candidates on the ballot, they add up to fewer than 573: Jill Stein, 385; Kent Mesplay, 50; myself, 39; Michael Oatman, 39; Gary Swing, 30; Gerard Davis, 18.
Digging deeper into the election results: in three counties — La Paz, Santa Cruz and Greenlee — there was a three-way tie for first place, or for last place, since nobody voted in the Green primary.
To show how silly the results might look in such a low-turnout election, Jill Stein and Michael Oatman each got 100% of the vote in a couple of Arizona’s 15 counties, where only one person cast a vote, and I came in second in several counties with just one vote.
Basically the electorate is a lot smaller than those for student body president in most American middle schools.
Thank you again, Richard. Can you tell us (or point us to information saying) which of the other five states with Green Presidential primaries had lists of Green candidates out in time for a candidate to use it to qualify in Arizona? This alternative to gathering signatures would be pretty meaningless if there aren’t lists to use to qualify that way . . . almost as chicken-and-egg as using polls to judge who qualifies for debates.
Jill Stein and Kent Mesplay got on the Arizona Green Party presidential primary by submitting signatures, not by showing they are already on in two other state Green Party presidential primaries.