On August 31, the Connecticut Secretary of State determined that the Green Party statewide petition is valid. It has nominees for President and U.S. Senate. So far the Connecticut Secretary of State has not finished checking the Libertarian petition or the De La Fuente petition.
If you count the three states where she has confirmed write in access, she now has access to 500 EVs. Where she has a ballot line only, it’s 458.
Although I don’t agree with many of their positions, I am impressed at how the Green Party has shown consistent year after year improvement with their presidential ballot access efforts. There was a data table of this somewhere on the internet, but now I can’t find it. I’m sure it would be a snap for Richard to put one together, perhaps even with a nice line graph. Richard?
Congratulations. I disagree with many of their positions too, but they have a right to run. By chance, in June I had met one of their volunteers and signed the petition. According to Emily Garfinkel, Co-chair of the Green Party of Connecticut, they got on the ballot by a small margin: only 100 signatures above the 7,500 requirement, with only 7,600 signatures valid out of the approximately 15,000 signatures collected by volunteers and by paid petitioners combined. That means their validity rate was only 50.67%.
Jeff, until we know exactly which states Stein will be on, it seems premature to do that work.
I believe that there are still many more signatures that need to be counted by the state, but at this point the CT GP has already passed the threshold.
Ross — why does the state need to review the additional signatures? Are people who sign one such petition not permitted to sign another?
There are separate petitions for each party. Any registered voter can sign as many of the petitions as they’d like, but when the SOTS checks the petitions, the timing is dependent on the town clerks. The petitions need to be verified in individual towns, then sent to the SOTS. So far, the town clerks have only sent enough into affirm that the Greens will meet the 7,500 threshold. However, there are still more petitions for every party, including the Greens, that need to be sent in to the SOTS from the town clerks. That’s my understanding of it.
Sorry, my understanding–typing on a smartphone.
I found the GP’s historic ballot access data here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Stein_presidential_campaign,_2012
I took the data from JaredC’s link and started to gin up a projected column for 2016. While doing that, I noticed that the totals at the top don’t accurately reflect the data in the table.
For example, in 2008 the column header shows 32 states on the ballot plus another 16 write-in for a total of 48. But if you actually count the entries in the table, it actually shows 33 states on the ballot. And while the total 528 EV count of ballots + write-in is accurate, the total EV count for ballots is only 368 but should be 376.
For 2004 it’s equally screwed up. Column header shows 25 on the ballot plus another 18 write-in for a total of 43. But the table shows 26 on the ballot plus 19 write-in for a total of 45. And the EV counts are missing 4 for the on-ballot (267 instead of 271), and missing 13 for write-in (212 instead of 225). I’m guessing the missing write-in is Virginia (13 EV), and the missing ballot is either HI, ME or RI (4 EV).
The 2012 numbers are correct.
Anyway, someone should use quality data like Richard’s to update and correct that Wikipedia page.
Unrelated question: If the lawsuit in Nevada fails, will write-in votes for Stein/Baraka be counted?
Jim, write-ins aren’t allowed in Nevada. They are one of seven states that don’t.
I got confirmation from multiple sources that the Green petitioners indeed must have had a higher validity rate because not all petitions came in from all towns for all parties yet nor have they all been counted.
For example, Jack Kramer’s article “On Connecticut ballot: Green Party’s Jill Stein” at http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20160901/on-connecticut-ballot-green-partys-jill-stein includes this quote:
“Patrick Gallahue, spokesman for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, said Friday that the Green Party “has crossed the necessary threshold – and we are still counting.””
Hopefully Johnson and De La Fuente will be on the ballot in CT too. About 16,000 Johnson signatures were submitted.