Orange County Register Carries Op-Ed Criticizing Severe Ballot Access Laws for Minor Parties and Independents

Posted on by May 12, 2024

Jacob Hornberger, one of the candidates seeking the Libertarian presidential nomination, has this op-ed about ballot access laws in the Orange County (California) Register.

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Orange County Register Carries Op-Ed Criticizing Severe Ballot Access Laws for Minor Parties and Independents — 32 Comments

  5. This is the kind of writing that makes me dislike Mr. Hornberger as a choice for LP nominee, especially when Mr. Hornberger has been on the ballot more times as an Independent than Mr. Kennedy (and Mr. Hornberger has been an Independent candidate more times than a Libertarian as well). Mr. Hornberger also rejects involvement in the LP except for when its time to ask for the party’s ballot line to run for president.

    Interestingly, Mr. Hornberger’s personal and campaign position on the impact and origins of the novel Coronavirus Nineteen is dramatically out of step with the Libertarian Party’s rank and file and platform which is to say “it doesn’t matter” and “no comment”. For the greatest totalitarian moment in the world’s modern history, certainly greater than even Nine-Eleven and the longest war in US history, Mr. Hornberger is no libertarian on this issue. While on the other hand, Mr. Kennedy carries this issue with the much welcomed focus that Libertarians universally appreciate.

    The pot calling the kettle black, indeed.

  6. Hornberger is a troll among trolls. Libertarians really mainly live to troll each other, regardless of what they say they want to accomplish.. As for universal anything among libertarians, universal dislike for each other and pretty much anyone else, but especially each other, is the closest thing to universal anything among them. Just defining who or what is or isn’t a libertarian is an endless Gordian knot, before you even attempt to accomplish anything at all.

    As for greatest totalitarian moment, my cousin is a jerk and hangs out with control freak jerks, but come on – he is no Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. For a Chinese Communist government worker with covert US deep state ties, he’s not that terrible. Even in his wild and crazy younger days, when his buddies would go rampage in town like it was Kristallnacht every night. It wasn’t the holocaust, gulags, killing fields, holodomor, etc, etc.

  7. David “Trime Taveler” Dunlap for the win! Just my 3-cents worth.

  8. If you’re not up there at the Libertarian pinnacle of the Nolan Chart, but otherwise in the Libertarian quadrant, you risk being a Not-A-REAL-Libertarian Libertarian. You mustn’t take one step down the slippery slope.

  9. If only it were that easy to qualify. The degree of petty disagreement is literally endless. The more you dig into details the more you realize there are, at a minimum, as many opinions of who or what is a real libertarian as there are people claiming to be one..and each of those has a seemingly endless number of personalities. If there’s a right answer it’s to remember to back away slowly and carefully and remember not to try that again..

  10. It gets much worse when they “party,” because they get completely twisted in multiple ways that have unpredictable, volatile interactions from the substance mix. They lose all inhibitions and go directly for every jugular in sight, any handy heavy machinery and sharp objects, and generally anything that can cause as much human damage in their immediate vicinity as possible. It’s a knee jerk reaction and seems completely normal from their distorted perspective .

  11. Sarwark was and is 100% shut everything down in regards to COVID. That’s why is he is not a libertarian and should be kicked out of the party.

  12. When the party gave up defending Lagrange Points from statist occupation, the backsliding was inevitable.

  14. As opposed to what, a good communist? That would render him a corpse. As for cosplay party, will the last survivor at the top of the hill alone after kicking every one off one by one or in groups kick himself off or stay there alone for eternity, and eventually mumify into a monument to the ultimate selfish individualistic contrarian conceit, seeing himself as god and only true defender of logic and reason?

  15. My last comment may sound a bit facetious, but when Libertarians stop trying to apply the NAP to every issue, and instead tried to find a comfortable space inside the Libertarian quadrant of the Nolan Chart, the Venn diagrams of folks who were “more Libertarian than not” didn’t always intersect well.

  17. Presuming there’s a non controversial way to apply the dream state of nap to any issue is already taking an unwarranted leap. Prioritizing issues, strategies, tactics, rhetorical emphasis, etc – It’s a literally infinite Gordian knot jumble. The more you try to untangle it, the more tangled you get.

  18. There’s also plenty of disagreement among people who believe they are libertarians as to whether napping is even a worthy goal at all. Libertarians disagree disagreeably , whether about agreeing or disagreeing. If there’s anything that outs someone as a pretend libertarian, it may be any degree of uncertainty or tolerance for others stumbling imperfectly in the dark in the same general direction.

  19. Confinement, as crime prevention, rehabilitation, punishment or any other claimed goal, has not shown itself to be as effective or cost efficient as various alternatives. It ideally should be reserved for short term pretrial detention and death penalties involving entombment or starvation. Short of that, it should be much more like medieval dungeons and much less like adult day care.

    What crimes are involved in factional leadership disputes of cosplay political parties or arguments over who is the most libertarian of them all with an endless hall of funhouse mirrors and napping inner (at best) beauties, uncountable mental dwarves, and trying to be evil queens?

  20. Otherwise , what has Sarwark done to be more deserving of limited prison capacity and associated resources than other somewhat worthy candidates?

    Or, are heretical libertarians always first in line for the gulag in a stateless utopia or nightwatchman state of sleep deprived confusion, ahead of all other thought as well as action criminals, much like heretical communists in communist utopias and pseudoscientific socialist large scale experiments in criminally insane asylums run by the most vicious of the inmates?

  21. “There’s also plenty of disagreement among people who believe they are libertarians as to whether napping is even a worthy goal at all”

    When it was, there was more cohesion.

    Fewer members, maybe, but more common direction.

  22. Re. Mr Hornybugger’s op-ed (which, to be pedantic, technically isn’t an op-ed at all but rather an opinion piece, or perhaps a letter to the editor).

    “If he had remained in the Democratic Party and won the party’s nomination, he would have automatically been on the ballot in November.”
    Like they would ever have allowed that to happen. They wouldn’t even allow a communist like Sanders to win the nomination in 2016, much less a vaccine realist like Kennedy.

    “As Kennedy is now discovering, securing ballot access is no easy task.”
    Pretentious much? Presumably Kennedy knew exactly what he was signing up for when he decided to drop out of the Democrat rat race. He’s stupid when it comes to climate fraud, not the election process.

    “Moreover, in 2003 California held a special recall election for governor in which 135 candidates were on the ballot. Somehow, California voters were able to figure out who they wanted to vote for and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
    On the contrary, the fact that they ended up voting for a former neo-nazi washed-up immigrant actor suggests that they weren’t able to figure it out at all. Remember, this is the same (quasi-)state where people are too dumb (or at least claim to be to dumb) to figure out the difference between “independent” and “American Independent Party”…

  24. All states are that dumb. Many voters in any state for example don’t realize they don’t have to vote for the party they are registered to vote with or can change their party registration or have none. A lot of people are wrong as to whether their state has party registration. Many people believe they are permanently barred from voting, even for minor misdemeanors many years earlier or even lesser offenses, or even arrests without conviction, unpaid fines, etc. Lots of people believe elections are warrant round up traps. It goes on and on. It’s a subject where many, many people know or care very little and tend to be wrong about what they think they know.

    Kennedy seems to be discovering he can meet petition requirements easily. Hornberger is projecting.

    The allegedly democratic party won’t even give Kennedy secret service protection, when he ran with them or now. They literally want him dead. No chance they wouldn’t have cheated him out of a nomination if he earned it.

    Libertarian members are a source of much more confusion, like everything else. Many libertarians don’t consider the LP or anyone willingly associated with it, now or ever, to be libertarian at all. Others only consider the party to be the only true libertarians. Within the party there are disagreement over membership definition – state , national, local ; voter registration, dues paying, or signing the magic words the meaning of which is very much in debate.

    Once a member, always a member until incantation rescinded? Only while dues are up to date? Something in between? Who can terminate a membership, if anyone, other than the member? Etc,etc.

    There is literally zero uncontested .

  25. Mail in ballots would be fucking retarded. No wonder the AZ not keeps pushing it.

  27. PART OF LP MEMBERSHIP —

    CONTRACT – BE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH ANY OTHER PARTY — MEMBER / OFFICER / DONOR / ETC

    VIOLATION — $$$ DAMAGES — AS IN OTHER CONTRACTS
    —
    VARIOUS GROUPS HAVE MAIL BALLOTS FOR CHOOSING GROUP OFFICIALS.

  29. You’re supposed to be able to work with people you disagree with.

    Nuña, Kennedy and his supporters and funders are putting in work to achieve ballot access. Hornberger’s comment about it not being “easy” doesn’t mean he thinks Kennedy will fail. The Libertarian Party has achieved ballot access for president in all 50 states multiple times. Kennedy interviewed Richard Winger, by the way.

    Schwarzenegger won in 2003 with 49% of the vote against over 100 other candidates. Turnout was reported at 61% which is respectable. That is good evidence that having over 100 names on the ballot did not confuse voters to the point of failure. Your opinion of Schwarzenegger or of Californians is irrelevant. There may be reasons why people get more confused by voter registration forms, but less confused by ballots.

  30. Kennedy will do much better than the l.p. in ballot access, despite big l.p. head start.

  31. DID TERMINATOR S MAKE THREATS IN 2003 TO TERMINATE CA IF HE WAS NOT ELECTED ???

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