Comments on: Massachusetts ACLU Agrees to Represent Libertarian Party over Presidential Substitution

By: Arthur Torrey

Arthur Torrey — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:31:02 +0000

I should add that the Mass. Secretary of State’s office told us that substitution would be allowed earlier this year, before we started petitioning… They said it would simply be a matter of filing the appropriate paperwork, presumably a form signed by all the electors, though they were a bit unclear on that part.

It was not until AFTER the Natcon when we started to ask about what the mechanics of DOING the substitution would be that they changed their minds and said they weren’t going to allow the substitution. The grounds for changing their minds were that they had allowed the earlier substitutions because the need had come up after the normal “Petitioning window” had closed – however because we had held our convention EARLY enough, the window was still open (it doesn’t close until mid-July) so the Barr campaign could simply go out and collect signatures on a new petition and qualify that way…

ART
LPMA Operations Facilitator
Potential LPMA Presidential Elector (Who won’t vote for Barr!)
(speaking for myself)

By: Jeff Wartman

Jeff Wartman — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:07:45 +0000

Ben,

Actually, we always had it earlier. We used to nominate the year before. Bergland was nominated at the 1983 convention and Ron Paul at the 1987 convention. While we’ve played around with the scheduling, for the most part the conventions were the year before.

By: Ben of Massachusetts

Ben of Massachusetts — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:31:37 +0000

Has the Libertarian Party normally had an earlier convention so that petition drives could be accommodated? As it is, the partyâ€™s May 22 convention was months earlier than that of the Dâ€™s and Râ€™s this year. It seems unreasonable that we would have to make it even earlier just to accommodate the petitioning requirements of a single state.

By: Jeff Wartman

Jeff Wartman — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:35:08 +0000

Just another reason we should have our nominating convention earlier, like in the old days.

By: Ben of Massachusetts

Ben of Massachusetts — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:38:23 +0000

Let me see if Iâ€™ve got this straight: 1) The petitioning process started before the LP convention. 2) The name on the petition (George Phillies) did not match the name chosen by the convention (Bob Barr). 3) The Secretary of State wonâ€™t allow a substitution of names.

So for the Mass LP to place its partyâ€™s candidate for President on the ballot, it would have had to accurately predict the outcome of a convention that had not occurred yet. In fact, the conventionâ€™s nominee, Bob Barr, had not even declared his candidacy when the petitioning began.

Is Kafka our Secretary of State now?