On August 12, the Washington State Democratic Party challenged Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s ballot position. See this story.
The procedure that Kennedy used has been normal in Washington state for over 30 years. Although the state law talks about attendees at a nominating convention, that has long been interpreted to mean an outdoor meeting, with passersby signing, is permitted.
True, but it’s a sad statement for his campaign if he doesn’t have enough supporters in, say, the SeaTac area to have gathered enough for a more traditional convention and gotten all his signatures that way.
Is SeaTac the Navy equivalent of HardTack? Why didn’t they just name is SoggyBiscuit?
Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area.
A campaign can’t simultaneously pretend it is viable for a state’s electoral vitae and that it can’t pull off an actual gathering of a thousand actual supporters in an entire state who are registered and willing to sign for ballot access. I think this challenge should fail based on precedent, but this would be a signal to me to not vote for or otherwise support rfk jr unless I actually found him to be the best candidate on the issues and was basing my vote/support solely on that basis, neither of which is the case.
* electoral vote
And yes, it’s theoretically possible that a campaign could build that support between now and November. I just don’t see any signs that this campaign is built for any such ramping up. To do that, he’d have had to, at a minimum, qualify for debates.
He didn’t qualify for CNN and clearly won’t qualify for any future debates due to the poll criteria. Campaigns which don’t qualify for debates see their support drop off as the election gets closer, not ramp up. The upper performance range expectations are then ~ Nader 2000 or Gary Johnson 2016, that is 2-4%. To get above that you have to qualify for at least some debates.
A few months ago, I saw rfk Jr as having Perot level potential. Right now it’s Nader or Johnson level at best, and that won’t change if Shanahan writes more big checks. The fact that she’s not doing that, even as a donor match and even when they are per Cheryl in financial dire straits, should also tell you something.
As if Harris is in any danger of not carrying Washington State.
She will carry it easily. But Kennedy’s campaign has to provide signs that it’s headed for Perot or above levels or even Anderson 1980 levels. Doing the petition in a way that this particular challenge would have been impossible would have been a fairly easy one if they actually have the levels of support they want us to think they do e.g. “polls are biased, volunteers are ramping up” – easy thing to claim, but all measurables say otherwise.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/08/12/rfk-jr-election-third-party-vote-trump-harris/74718488007/
UT STORY ABOUT RFKJR AND HIS BALLOT ACCESS PROBLEMS
Trump is courting Kennedy because he wants to press every advantage, but it seems to me that if he stays in Kennedy is more likely to help Trump and hurt Harris. But, maybe this was more true when Biden was the presumptive nominee. If Harris ends up having more hardcore and motivated supporters than Trump, Kennedy could conceivably cut in the other direction.
This seems counterintuitive based on Kennedy’s actual policy views, both lifelong and posted on his campaign site, but some right wing/conservative leaning independents show a remarkable capacity for wishful thinking and self delusion when it comes to Kennedy, cherrypicking a couple of issue stances and ignoring the rest.
I think Trump is being stupid in not having a public debate with Kennedy. That would be the best way for him to “court” Kennedy and potential Kennedy voters, not behind the scenes meetings. Or maybe he’s right, and the people on the fence between the two care more about operation warp speed than federal taxes and regulations, gun confiscation, jailing anthropogenic climate change “deniers,” etc, etc. If Trump can’t point out RFK jrs lifelong far left positions in a debate, even with the gift of Kennedy’s vocal problem, he is a truly terrible candidate and headed for a loss to Harris regardless of what Kennedy does.
Kennedy is a wild card. We won’t know for sure how he is affecting the election until after it is over.
Kennedy’s biggest impact will be in the battleground states. This is why those states ought to consider holding run-offs, if no candidate for President gets 50%.
WZ 1025 AM
USA CONST 2-1-4 — ONE DAY TO CHUSE STATE ELECTORS
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NONPARTISAN EXECS VIA APPV — PENDING CONDORCET — RCV DONE RIGHT
@Ray,
In Washington, candidates file a petition.
• I, the undersigned, declare that,
• I am a registered voter of the State of Washington.
• I personally attended a nominating convention held on ______________________ , 2024 in the city of ______________________________.
• I support with my signature the nominees listed above.
• I have not signed another nominating petition for this election year.
It is not attendance at the convention that is being measured, but rather support for the nominee. You might attend a Green Party convention and then choose not to support the nominee Jill Stein.
There may have been a time when the parties had actual conventions in each county, but at some time they evolved in meetings more like the firehouse primaries in Virginia.
Thanks Jim as always. As it stands now, the petitions don’t measure anything except how much people who happen to be passing through a busy public foot traffic location or locations are willing to
STOP
Fill out the petition or “attendance roll” legibly and correctly if they are eligible
Tolerate a non duopoly choice on the presidential ballot and/or help out the person asking them to sign
In other words, it’s effectively a typical ballot access petition in all but name and wording.
That doesn’t measure actual support at all. If you took a poll of passers by at the same location the candidate in question depending on who they are may have 1% or 5% support. But it may be 50% or 80% among the people who actually stop to find out what the person approaching them wants them to sign. Mind you, if you have one person doing the petition and one doing the poll diagonally from each other at a street crossing, those might be fairly typical results, and in both cases that would be from the people who actually stop at all and are qualified e.g. Registered to vote in that state.
Now if rfk jr had an actual – say, speech – and you passed around the attendance sheet there. That would be more like what that wording has in mind than what actually happens.
Again, I think the challenge should fail because the precedent has now been long standing that the way it’s done now is good enough.
But if the campaign ACTUALLY had a lot of support, a real convention would serve to fire up potential donors and volunteers and network with various activists and groups in the state in addition to merely qualifying for the ballot.
The fact they did it like the less well funded typical non duopoly effort speaks for itself. They did it the way they did because they had no confidence in being able to draw a big enough crowd. Because they actually do NOT have a lot of support.
Harris and Trump draw tens of thousands to their speeches. If Kennedy had even one tenth the support of one of them, shouldn’t he have been able to draw a crowd which included at least a thousand Washington State voters willing to fill out that form with their correct and legible information?
Plus everything else I said above.
@AZ,
The Constitution does not require that the time for appointing electors be a single day. Until 2022, federal statute explicitly provided for contingent procedures. That had been put in place deliberately for States that required majority for election.
A State can still adopt a hybrid version of the method used by Tennessee in its early presidential elections. In Tennessee, the state legislature appointed three persons from each county, who would meet and appoint the presidential electors. A State could elect this intermediate body in September, with a runoff in October. This body would meet on “election day” to make their appointment.
I’m not sure whether I explained the “opinion poll” vs “convention attendance sheet” experiment well enough. Did you understand what I was getting at?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2024/08/13/robert-kennedy-jr-may-be-kept-off-ballots-in-washington-state/74782275007/
UT STORY — WA – RFKJR
He’s certified
@Ray,
Since the conventions must have published notice, it is quite likely that some signers deliberately attended the event. In Texas, the RFK campaign would post notices of events where a volunteer would be circulating a petition. I drove by one such event in a small park, and there was a cluster of half a dozen, with a couple wearing Kennedy shirts. Perhaps some were signers, who stopped to talk. They might have also been training sessions for other volunteers.
I suspect that the process in Washington has evolved over time. You probably were born after widespread deployment of personal transportation. If you wanted to attend a political convention, you would get up extra early and milk the cows, then hitch up buggy and drive to the county seat for the convention. Maybe there would be a speaker, or at least the candidates. You would sign the convention roster. There could be some formal business such as re-electing the party chair. There might be a break so you could eat the fried chicken you had brought with you. Washington only requires 1000 convention attendants statewide, with at least 100 at an individual convention.
Washington only has partisan nominations for presidential candidates. At one time only minor parties would nominate by convention. There were not separate Democratic and Republican primaries.
Now the only nominating conventions are for president for smaller parties. The larger parties hold state conventions to choose delegates to the national convention, and probably do some party business.
Maybe there is an actual convening of the convention. You have to have 100 attendees, so it is likely more than a hired circulator from out of state with a clipboard and an umbrella. Hold a convention with some party members, then keep the attendance roster for late comers.
The Washington Secretary of State has certified 9 minor party candidates for president/vice president.
We The People Party; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Nicole Shanahan
Green Party; Jill Stein, Samson LeBeau Kpadenou
Socialism and Liberation Party; Claudia De la Cruz, Karina Garcia
Socialist Workers Party; Rachele Fruit, Dennis Richter
Socialist Equality Party; Joseph Kishore, Jerry White
Libertarian Party; Chase Oliver, Mike ter Maat
Cascade Party; Krist Novoselić, James Carroll
Justice For All Party; Cornel West, Melina Abdullah
Independent Candidate; Shiva Ayyadurai, Crystal Ellis
Jim, I’ve done the attendance roll petitions in that state. In practice they are no different than ballot access petitions in other states. They are conducted the exact same way.
Also, no, I don’t think I even once has anyone at one of those tell me they showed up due to a newspaper notice.