Matthew Riccardi, the Constitution Party gubernatorial nominee in New Jersey this year, will have his party label “Constitution Party” on the November 2017 ballot. The New Jersey Elections Department had originally believed he was not entitled to it because of a missing form, but the problem has been straightened out.
He’d get more votes if it said “Independent”.
There already are two independents on the ballot – a third would not pull any more votes. Even if you dislike the CP, the word Constitution has a positive ring to it. I believe CP candidates get a significant number of votes from people who want to cast a ballot for a protest candidate. “Libertarian” sounds ideological to some – Constitution sounds patriotic. That has nothing to do with platforms – it reflects on the political knowledge the protest voter.
Again, the CP platform and candidate aside, some voters looking to vote for none of the above are attracted to the word Constitution. Just as some would be attracted to Working Families etc.
Funny, when it comes to voter registration numbers, the CP in those states that features the word ‘constitution’ in their title have less people registered to it then in other parties. Utah is a good example of this, where the IAP and the Libertarian Party have much bigger numbers the the Utah CP.
In fact if not for the Nevada IAP, the CP would have less then 50,000 registered voters nationally.
Furthermore the word ‘constitution’ doesn’t really seem to attract as many voters as the word ‘independent’ does; unless we count the few and far between rural bible belt areas where a CP organization would be well established, but even those areas are in decline.