The Green Party had a presidential primary in Massachusetts on March 6. The Secretary of State has finally released the results, which are: Jill Stein 1,018; Kent Mesplay 89; Harley Mikkelson 84; “no preference” 232. There were also 95 write-ins, and 36 blank ballots.
The only states which have provided presidential primaries to any minor parties so far in 2012 are Massachusetts, Arizona, and Missouri, plus the District of Columbia. Future presidential primaries in 2012 for minor parties will be held in California, Nebraska, North Carolina, and possibly South Dakota. Several minor parties qualified for presidential primaries in Ohio but no presidential candidates placed their names on presidential primary ballots in that state.
The state party expects the 11 delegates at stake to be awarded follows: 7 for Stein, 1 for Mesplay, 1 for Mikkelson, 2 for “No Preference” .
What I really want to know is how many states are running Congressional and Legislative races for smaller parties!
All this noise about the presidential races is perplexing. Even if Jill Stein became president — which is unlikely if not impossible –how would she or any other one of these smaller party candidates work with a primarily Democratic-Republican Congress? Any answer to that will be hopeful at best.
No one seems to be able to answer that question.
#2 No Difference: The Green Party has at least a few candidates for Congress this year, as does the Libertarian Party and probably some other minor parties as well. If the Greens or the Libertarians were able to generate enough interest to carry their presidential candidate to victory, it’s reasonable to think that they could probably have some of their Congressional candidates win on their coattails.
I don’t think that will happen this year, but the Greens and Libertarians have not staked everything on the presidency nor have they done so in recent years. They have been competing for various kinds of offices.
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