The Pennsylvania Libertarian Party’s candidates for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and U.S. Senator withdrew today, rather than face the risks of a challenge to their statewide petition. They were told that if they didn’t withdraw, and the challenge showed that they don’t have enough signatures, their costs would be between $92,000 and $106,000.
There will still be some Libertarians on the Pennsylvania ballot for U.S. House, state legislature, and local office, however.
This means that Pennsylvania will be one of five states with no minor party or independent candidates on the statewide ballot. The others are Alabama, Washington (because of the operation of the top-two system), Kentucky, and New Mexico. Of course, there are also three states that don’t have any statewide races this year, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia.
The Pennsylvania Libertarian statewide nominees will continue to campaign as write-in candidates. The Green Party also has a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania law says that all write-ins must be counted, but that law is ignored in some counties. A federal lawsuit is pending in the 3rd circuit that challenges both the fee/challenge system and the failure of many counties to canvass write-ins, and the failure of the state to tally the write-ins for statewide candidates who did get some of their write-ins counted.
Sigh.
What the hell is wrong with people! Pennsylvania doesn’t allow people to cast write in votes for state wide candidates! All the opposition parties should band together for a boycott campaign of this years election! This is a complete sham and it needs to be exposed.
I love how “Pat Toomey for US Senate” ads by Google appear at the end of this page. And yes, many counties DO FAIL TO COUNT WRITE IN VOTES. Wake up PA, PA Constitution is ignored, and the state wide Republicans and Democratic party people are just fine with that.
This is not suprising since they probably didn’t have enough valid signatures to survive a validity check.
They had enough signatures. The problem is the courts have taken the position that they can impose ridiculous fees and court cost on the candidates if they lose. The fact is it doesn’t matter how good the signatures are. If they want you off, you’re off. PA has as a practical matter outlawed the opposition. If we don’t do something like a boycott campaign there will never be a contested election in this state again.
Until we challenge the “invalidating criteria” and the “challenge system” in federal court, I don’t think we’ll make much headway:
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/50946
All local Green Party candidates in PA (including myself) made the Nov ballot. But like the Libertarians,
our statewide candidate Mel Packer (U.S. Senate) was denied a ballot spot.
This makes PA pretty much like WA and CA… top two. What a tremendous loss of constitutional freedom.
Why did they go to all the trouble of obtaining the signatures and everything if they are not going to follow through on it?
#8- I totally agree. This sets a terrible precedent all around. People in PA will not be interested in contributing to ballot access drives if this is the likely result. This was supposed to be the year that ballot access was going to be easier due to the reasonably low number of signatures required. If no minor party can make this hurdle without backing down when challenged, then it appears there will be no alternative parties on the ballot again. A Ross Perot type figure perhaps, but no Greens or Libertarians again. Very, very sad.
GOP in PA is trying to bankrupt or cause fiscal meltdown of minor parties. Just like big corporations suing small business owners over frivolous issues. They have the deep pockets to stay in the legal-game forever and the small-time business or party does not.
#10- It was the Democrats who challenged the Green party signatures. Both dominant parties are guilty of suppressing alternatives.
Sad day. If you have never tried to get signatures to get someone on the ballot, let alone a 3rd party, then SHUT UP. You have no idea what you are talking about.
As one Commonwealth Court Judge once said from the bench – the Commonwealth has the duty to protect the two-party system.
#12- I hope your SHUT UP wasn’t directed at me. I have participated in many ballot drives for the LP and I know how difficult it is to get folks to sign. I also know how difficult it is to get all the infomation validated by the signer when they are usually in a hurry. I’ve never petitioned for money but the pressures there are even worse. Yeah, I know what I’m talking about.
Sounds like all the minor party candidates SHOULD get together and sue the State of Pennsylvania…if the Republicans think this is a way to endear themselves to the voting public (because this year is THEIR TURN), they are sadly mistaken!
They are unable to “follow through” because of state extortion. If they lose the challenge, they may be liable to pay upwards of $80,000. Nader was charged $80,000 in 2004 even though he had almost twice the signatures required and the same thing happened to the Green Party’s candidate, Carl Romanelli, when the Democrats took him off the ballot in 2006 even though he had 100,000 signatures. Romanelli must also pay $80,000. Unless you’re willing to risk your home, you can run for statewide office in Pennsylvania!
Maybe it’s time to smell the ballots burning & abandon voting altogether.
To John Murphy (#16): If this “minor party” is not going to follow through, it never should have started the process. There is a real problem with some of these “minor parties” not providing hope to the people; i.e., the Peace and Freedom Party of Califorina which continues to insist on being a one-state Party. If people are not going to be serious about what they are doing, then they should not be involved in politics.
Part of making good decisions is knowing when to cut your losses. I really doubt people would support a party that recklessly incurred huge debt and demonstrated no capacity to evaluate circumstances. The Democratic and Republican Parties excepted, of course.
Political campaigns do not always end as planned, just ask Hillary. That is the nature of the beast. It is easy to play Monday morning quarterback, but it is not so easy to take the hits in the game. You have to be able to get back up and play another day. Too many hits and you are out of the game for good.
There was a lot of valuable information gained in this effort, and it should not be characterized as a waste by any means, for any of the parties and candidates involved. Certainly the LP in Pennsylvania will be as strong coming out of this as it would have been with the statewide candidates on the ballot.
Perhaps the other thing that should be pointed out is that the LPPA did engage in defending against the challenge. It was not as if the candidates withdrew at the filing of the challenge petition, as the story may lead one to believe.
When it became clear that prevailing in the defense was not going to be possible, even though I believe we had enough registered voters sign our papers, then it was time to make a decision. I believe the candidates made the most appropriate choice given the circumstances we were facing.
#20- I understand the reasoning but this year’s signature requirement was the lowest it has been in many years. My question is this; if no alternative party can overcome a requirement of under 20,000 signatures how will they overcome a requirement three or four times that much? I believe it is a fair question.
Thank you, Mik Robertson (#’s 19, and 20) for the explanation. I figured that there must have been a good reason but I wanted to know what it was.
“Casual Bystander” (#21) does, indeed, ask a fair question. Let me take that one step more: What are the people of Pennsylvania going to do about this offense to the democratic process? Paul M. Boos (#15) made a good point. It would be good to see all of the “minor” parties in that state get together and take on the corrupt establishment in a way that they could win. Paul suggested suing Pennsylvania. They could try that. They could also try getting behind some strong candidates that they could all agree to support.
Phil Sawyer (#22) The now outlawed opposition parties could also join together and boycott this farce of an election. We are already suing Pennsylvania. So far the only idea I have heard that has any real chance of working is my boycott idea that I’ve been thinking about since 2006. There is no justice in the courts, we can’t do write in votes and they will probably never “allow” anybody to ever challenge the Democrats and Republicans again.
@21 and 22; We have in fact gained statewide ballot access when the signature requirement was higher, so it can be done. It depends on the resources available to commit to the effort. As it was, this year we had other commitments and tried to do what we could with the resources available. We made a calculated decision to try to fly under the big party challenge radar.
The filing of John Krupa with the Tea Party meant that idea was out the window. However, we still should have, and I believe we did have, enough registered voters sign our papers for our candidates to be on the ballot. The problem we ran into was the ability to identify them at the address which they signed the papers using the voter registration database.
We will be doing a press conference this coming Monday, August 23, at the Capitol Rotunda in Harrisburg with our candidates, representatives of other alternative parties, concerned citizen organizations like VotePA, the PA LWV, and the Pa Ballot Access Coalition, and the prime sponsor of election code reform legislation in the Pennsylvania Senate, Mike Folmer.
The PA Libertarian, Green and Constitution Parties are already involved in federal legal action to reform the PA election code, and the appeal of that case will be heard in the 3rd Circuit. Challenges in the PA court system do not get very far.
So there are things being done, and any suggestions would be considered.