On July 28, the Third Circuit refused any ballot access relief for minor party and independent candidates. Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania v Governor, 20-2481. The order is only two pages and does not mention any precedents from other courts or other states. It says the statewide petition was already reduced “by more than 90%” in a 2018 lawsuit, Constitution Party of Pennsylvania v Aichele. That is an untrue statement. The Constitution Party court order only reduced the statewide petitions, not the district petitions, and it went from 20,601 signatures for 2012, and 16,625 signatures for 2014, to 5,000 for elections starting in 2016. Furthermore the Constitution Party lawsuit was in 2016, not 2018.
The decision’s author is not indicated, but the order is signed by Judge Thomas Ambro (a Clinton appointee), Patty Shwartz (Obama), and Stephanos Bibas (Trump). As a result, it is extremely unlikely that any statewide Pennsylvania petition will succeed this year, except that the Libertarian statewide petition will probably qualify. There is an outside chance that Kanye West may be petitioning in Pennsylvania. He seems to have the financial resources to compete a 5,000-signature petition at the last minute. The petitions are due August 3, Monday.
The deadline in Pennsylvania is less than a week away. The article mentions that the Libertarian Party petition will “probably” succeed. Is there any information on exactly how close they are to having 5,000 valid signatures? There’s not a lot of time left.
“It says the statewide petition was already reduced “by more than 90%” in a 2018 lawsuit”
“it went from 20,601 signatures for 2012, and 16,625 signatures for 2014, to 5,000 for elections starting in 2016.”
That’s more like 75%, at the max. Did these judges flunk math?
Kanye Wesr has a personal net worth of $1.3 billion, and his wife, Kim Kardashian, is also worth about $1.3 billion or so herself, not counting his wealth, so of course he has the financial resources to spend lots of money on last minute petition drives.
Yes but it is not just about money. Brock Pierce’s campaign is going nowhere. As l mentioned previously he is or close to being a billionaire. I doubt that he will get the signatures needed to qualify in the state. One needs fame added to fortune in order to run an independent campaign. Also candidates should start running much earlier. If only West gets himself a versatile VP candidate to help him on the ticket as his VP candidate does not seem to be doing much besides her preaching and dental activities.
I have heard that Brock has launched petition drives in some states, and plans to start more shortly.
Kanye and Brock both made big mistakes by not started earlier. They should have started at least 6 months before they did. They both have the financial resources to have obtained 50 state plus DC ballot access, but now it is too late for them to get even close to that. They will be lucky if they can get on the ballot in enough states to theoretically be able to win enough Electoral College votes to win the election.
I wouldn’t count Howie and the Green Party out just yet. We’ve achieved petitioning miracles before, such as the 50,000 signatures we submitted in IL in 2016.
Up it to $50 a signature, and it will get done.
Voter ONE person sig forms.
How much New Age court stuff with LIES per sentence ??? –
due to lazy / liar so-called lawyers and worse so-called judges.
Can ONLY RW get history facts correct ???
I am being told the Libertarian Party is unlikely to qualify in Pennsylvania this year. “It doesn’t look good.” was the exact quote.
It will be their own fault if the LP of PA fails.
Why do you say that, Andy?
I noticed that Jorgensen has a campaign appearance this weekend in Erie, PA. If they are short on signatures, maybe that will be a good place to get what they need. On the other hand, if the party doesn’t end up qualifying in Pennsylvania, that will be embarrassing considering Jorgensen will be asking for support from people who won’t be able to vote for her.
I can’t say that I’ve followed this closely, but I’m always concerned about putting all of one’s eggs in one basket, and relying on lawsuits to the point that petitioning efforts are suspended completely. It seems that’s what happened here. Getting 5,000 signatures in a state with Pennsylvania’s population shouldn’t be that hard to do.
Could the Libertarian Party, Green Party, Constitution Party, and others collected the necessary signatures before March 2020 in Pennsylvania?
In the ice and snow? Seems unlikely.
PA has more than 40,000 registered Libertarian voters. They could go door to door just of registered Libertarians and gotten the signatures. Or they could have mailed 40,000 petition papers to those people and hoped just 10% of them returned them with an average of 2 signatures. That probably would have been cheaper than hiring petitioners and contact from the state party might have motivated people to get involved or send donations.
Jorgensen is a joke to begin with.
“Could the Libertarian Party, Green Party, Constitution Party, and others collected the necessary signatures before March 2020 in Pennsylvania?”
I don’t believe petitions are ready by then, nor has the convention happened
Pennsylvania does not permit general election petitions to begin circulating until mid-February of the election year.
Going door-to-door to only homes of registered Libertarians would be way too difficult. There are not enough of them in any one area.
Jim is right. If they’d of just mail the petitions they would not be in trouble. Now they are 100 percent guaranteed will fail. Maine already failed too. Jokegersen will end up with about 42 states, maybe 45 at the most. I wonder if Howie Hawkins will beat her in ballot access and maybe also votes. I don’t know why anyone ever hires petitioners instead of just mailing the petitions out which would make so much more sense. But sense is so rare anymore and people like to waste their money.
Richard- Is this the killer in the LP 50+ strategy?
Mailing petitions generally does not work very well. Lots of people assume they are junk mail, and throw them out, or they forget to mail them back, or they sign them improperly, and/or forger to sign declarations, or, if in a state which requires notarizatiom, fail to get them notarized, or they mail them back past the deadline. Lots of campaigns have tried mailers, and it generally works poorly.
Thank you Richard Winger.
All mail is fraudulent. Do not trust the post office. They are a marxist new world order globalist front. Only trust petitions which are collected in person. And certainly nothing transferred over 5-G or WWW (666).
Great news! The Libertarian Party appears to have risen to the challenge and turned in 10,250 signatures. Over double the requirement, sounds very challenge proof to me, but we’ll see.
LP should make it, unless the validity is bad.