On October 10, the Commonwealth Court Judge in Pennsylvania who is handling the challenge to the statewide Libertarian Party petition ruled that the Republicans cannot seek to re-open the challenge process. The Republican challengers had attempted to persuade the judge to give them another chance to invalidate certain signatures they had already agreed are valid. As a result, the Libertarian Party statewide petition is valid. The State Supreme Court will probably now take a slow approach to deciding whether signatures are valid if the signer forgot, or didn’t know, to add “2012” to the date column; and likewise take a slow approach to deciding if signatures are valid if the signer moved within the county and failed to re-register. These two issues are now moot. Nevertheless, the State Supreme Court will almost certainly decide them, for the sake of future disputes. Sometimes these cases take a year or more to decide when there is no immediate time pressure to decide them more quickly.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
Republican Lawyer claims they got overwhelmed by the Libertarians.
If only they had more resources and time to match the capabilities of the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania.
I was there almost everyday helping to defend our petition. It is true. The Republicans never imagined we would be able to assemble all the volunteers and manpower it took to get us to this place. My only regret is that I don’t get the opportunity to see the smug smirks wiped off the faces of some of the swarmiest Republican volunteers. On the other hand I have nothing but praise for both our attorney, Paul A. Rossi, who literally worked around the clock to help us win this battle. And FWIW, the Republican attorneys Ron Hicks, and Larry Otter were pretty decent people too, just hired to do a job which they lost. But those Republican volunteers, HA HA!!
I completely agree with Richard Schwarz on all counts.
Our attorney Paul Rossi did a phenomenal job defending the Libertarian Party petition — both in court sorting out the legal issues and overseeing the signature by signature review. I watched Paul in 2 different oral arguments before judges for this case, during which he presented our side of the issues very persuasively. This win also wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing volunteer effort. State chair Tom Stevens and volunteer coordinator Roy Minet arranged the 20 volunteers per day in Philly (the first 2 weeks) and the 8 volunteers per day in Harrisburg (the third week) for the volunteer review as well as the 4 volunteers per day (the 4th, 5th, and 6th weeks) for the lawyer review in Philadelphia. I helped out as many days as I could and saw a lot of familiar faces there day after day going head to head with the Republicans. It made me proud to be associated with the Libertarian Party.
On the Republican side the lead attorneys Ron Hicks and Larry Otter were very professional and pleasant to work with — as was Michelle Dresbold (their handwriting expert) and attorney Victor Stabile (who was my Republican counterpart in the Harrisburg lawyer review). In contrast some of the lower level Republican lawyers and volunteers in Philadelphia the first 2 weeks were abrasive and condescending (it was hit and miss… others were perfectly nice).
Richard Schwarz and I were lucky enough to be there at the very end of the process — in Commonwealth Court for the last day of the signature review. I was elated at our win! I’m very glad Pennsylvanians will be able to vote for Gary Johnson in November.
Going forward the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania absolutely must hire better petitioners, do validity checks, only pay for valid signatures, and insist some paid petitioners be located outside of Philadelphia. Further, the best way to get volunteer signatures is to run a boatload of candidates for lower level office (like State Representative and U.S. Congress), so I strongly encourage the LPPA to focus on candidate recruitment for 2016. Volunteer signatures are worth their weight in gold compared to the crappy paid signatures I saw the last few weeks.
Gary Johnson for President!!!
Well done.
Congratulations to all!
Gary Johnson for President, agreed!
It’s a relief that the PAGOP was unable to succeed in their efforts to restrict voter choice this time, but sad that they succeeded in intimidating the Constitution Party off the ballot. And it’s sad that the Dems have succeeded in the past against the Greens.
Voters must send a clear message to the major parties that attempts to restrict ballot access will lead to consequences all the way down the ballot. I’ve informed the PAGOP that I will not vote for ANY of their candidates (including several I planned to vote for) if they continued to pursue this course of action.
Chuck (et al),
It’s a sad state of affairs that Republicans who donate to the PAGOP are funding antidemocratic ballot access challenges, and paying for “private investigators” like Reynold Selvaggio.
WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
(you can tell I’m excited)
Chuck and Richard,
I don’t think it was luck that you were there and put in so much effort. I have just talked with Tom Stevens and congratulated him and the LPPA on their impressive win.
I would like to thank you and the other volunteers who pulled this off. An amazing accomplishment by dedicated Libertarians who have just dropped a Goliath.
I take my hat off too you and your cohorts.
Stephen Meier
This is truly outstanding news! As a resident of PA I also plan to vote only for Libertarians and no Republicans even in local races where there is no Libertarian running. Since the Democrats have pulled similar crappola against the Greens in past elections they don’t get my vote either. Good job LPPA!!
Good on the Libertarians! This is a victory for all third parties. Now what was it that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said? “Loser pays”? Time for the GOP to get out the checkbook!
@9 – as much as I’d like the GOP to break out the checkbook, it would look bad for the Libertarian/Green/Constitution case against such fees if the L’s took the money.
How many seconds until the gerrymander statists increase the petition requirements for 2014 and later ???
i.e. one more super-dubious victory for a minor party ??? Duh.
—
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
ONE election.
Equal nominating petitions.
#10 That’s a good point.
Congratulations to the hard working, diligent and committed Pennsylvania Libertarians. I am glad you were successful and impressed by your efforts.
Thanks for your hard work. I appreciate having the opportunity to vote for him.
A win is a win, but what I would give to have the challengers have to pay the Libertarian legal fees. At this point asking to review signatures that have already been agreed upon is an obvious waste of the court’s time, and there should be punishment as such.
on the issue of paying legal fees…. does this have to be asked for now? if not might it not be better left hanging like a sword of Damocles…..
Challenge us next time and we start with asking for legal fees for this time. So the bet becomes double or nothing.
Congratulations, LPPA, on your well deserved victory!
@10 – IMO, the GOP absolutely should be forced to pay for this obscene process. This case should be trumpeted to the national and international news media. America can’t claim to advocate democracy when laws like this exist. More incentives for the law to be taken off the books — either by legislation or by court decision.
I have watched this issue through the years, from afar, and I am utterly ashamed of the state where I went to college.
@17 – I don’t disagree, I would like to see the Libertarians get the money too, but I think the case is very strong to get the fees struck down this time. If the courts rule against striking them down, then I agree with #16…if (and when) third parties succeed, then start asking for legal fees.
The tough part is, this problem isn’t just a third party problem. There are Democrats who were threatened with such fees during the primary season by other Democrats.
Congratulations to the LPPA. As one who was there for just two days for the CP challenge, I know something about what an onerous task this was.
I am so glad I will have the chance to vote for Gary Johnson, Jim Gray, Rayburn Smith, Marakay Rogers, and Betsy Summers in November!
“Going forward the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania absolutely must hire better petitioners, do validity checks, only pay for valid signatures, and insist some paid petitioners be located outside of Philadelphia.”
Chuck, I said all this before the petition drive in Pennsylvania started, and while it was happening, yet I was ignored. I predicted that there’d be a problem like this months ago, and I’ve got time stamped emails to prove this.
All of these problems could have been avoided by simply following my advice, and, as a 16 year Libertarian Party members, and a person with 12 years of experience in ballot access, I know about which I am speaking on the subject.
Just to let everyone know, there was a team of high quality petition circulators spread out across Pennsylvania who petitioned to get Ron Paul and his slate of delegates on the Pennsylvania ballot. Most of these people were libertarians, and several of them are LP members. The minor party and independent candidates can start gathering petition signatures the day after the deadline for the Democrat and Republican primary petitions. The primary petitions ended around February 15. I called and tried to get the Libertarian Party and I was going to distribute it to all of the high quality petitioners who worked on the Ron Paul petition, however, instead of getting the petition in our hands so we could start the process of obtaining ballot access for the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania, we were stymied. We could sit there waiting around for the LP petition for weeks so everyone left to pursue other projects.
Not giving the LP petition to a crew of high quality, proven, experienced petitioners who were ALREADY SPREAD OUT ACROSS Pennsylvania was completely idiotic. We had petitioners in Erie, Pittsburgh, Johnstown, the Harrisburg area, Lancaster, Bucks county, Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs, etc… Everyone that was there generally gets high validity rates on signatures. Most of the people there were libertarians who were ready, willing, and able to engage in party building outreach activities while they petition. Does everyone here realize how completely moronic it was to turn this crew away instead of getting us the petition?
Several weeks later my brother (who regularly resides in PA, and whom I trained to petition, and who has petitioned on and off for 8 years) tried to get the Libertarian Party petition. He made some calls and somebody told him to call the LP National office. When he called the LP National office, the person who answered the phone told him to call the person whom LP National had handed an exclusive monopoly on the petition dive to (note that in the past on LP drives, it was an unheard of practice to hand an exclusive monopoly on a petition to anyone) told my brother that he had to work for him, and that the pay was .75 cents per signature. My brother already knew that the pay was $2 per signature because that’s what I had told him it was supposed to be, plus, he had petitioned for the Libertarian Party prior to this, and this is a rate that he had received before (note that he had previously petitioned for the LP in PA in 2004, 2008, and in 2010, and he had also petitioned for the LP in Maryland in 2006 and in Washington DC in 2004). My brother had also worked on other petitions (such as Ron Paul in PA in 2008 and in 2012) and he had never been paid a rate that low, so he naturally objected to the offer from the monopoly contractor in Philadelphia of .75 cents per signature. Then the monopoly contractor said that he’d pay him $1 per signature if he could average 100 signatures per day. This was not a good deal either, so he ended up working for an independent candidate who was running for a district office, and after that he worked for the Constitution Party (note that the Constitution Party also hired the same crew out of Philadelphia and they too got burned by low validity from that crew which is why they didn’t make the PA ballot).
Myself and another experienced Libertarian Party petitioner offered to go to Pennsylvania several times between April-June (and note that I’m registered to vote in PA, my LP membership is out of PA, and my car is registered in PA, and also note that I’ve petitioned for the LP there in 2000, 2004, and in 2008, and I also petitioned there for Ron Paul in 2008 and in 2012), and we were told that we were not needed there, or we were just flat out ignored.
Another important point about petitions in Pennsylvania is that on the minor party petitions, the names of the statewide candidates are in the top spots on the petition sheets, and below them on the petition sheets there are spaces for candidates running for district offices, as in for US House of Representatives, State Senate, and State Assembly, and the signatures for these district offices must come out of the districts where the candidates are running. The petition pages are also separated by county, so different counties can have different district candidates on them depending which counties they are.
I know that there are district candidates who did make the ballot in Pennsylvania this year, but I think that it is mostly because none of the district candidates got challenged. Fortunately, the Republicans were just focused on getting the statewide slate of LP candidates off the ballot, so the district office candidates slipped under the radar. I doubt that some of them would have survived a challenge because I know that some of them did not turn in nearly the level of padding of extra signatures as were turned in for the statewide slate of candidates. Also, how many more district candidates could have made the ballot in Pennsylvania this year had there been paid petitioners spread out in different districts across the state? I’d be willing to bet that there could have been more candidates for district office for the LP of PA this year had my plan been followed.
This is one reason why it is completely idiotic to run the entire paid petition effort out of Philadelphia. I brought this up to Bill Redpath multiple times and he ignored it. I even confronted the monopoly contractor out of Philadelphia about this and his response was that it was too inconvenient for him or any of his crew to work outside of the Philadelphia area.
One of the experienced Libertarian petitioners who had worked on the Ron Paul petition in Pittsburgh came back to Pittsburgh to visit some friends around April or May. This person tried to get a hold of the Libertarian Party petition, and they too were stymied, and they ended up not working on it due to being forced to work under the monopoly contractor in Philadelphia for a pathetic .75 cents-$1 per signature.
This situation in Pennsylvania was completely avoidable, and I want everyone involved in this fiasco to be aware of this fact. The problem was caused because Bill Redpath handed out a sweetheart, monopoly deal to one mercenary contractor in Philadelphia, and this person pocketed a large portion of the money in overrides and they hired a bunch of non-libertarians, several of whom had never even petitioned before. Given that many of these people lacked experience as petitioners, and given that none of them were actually libertarians, they either didn’t know, or they didn’t care to know how to do the job correctly. Several weeks went by before anyone even bothered to check their work, and they were getting paid in full, and pretty quickly. So there was zero incentive to do the job correctly. After several weeks a diligent LP member out of Philadelphia finally started to check their work, and what this person found was not good. He found that the entire batch of signatures were of low validity. So what was the response to this? Bill Redpath obtained funding for more signatures and they hired back the same crew to get those signatures. So they got rewarded for having low validity by getting paid to gather more signatures that were in addition to the original budget!
If I had been in charge of the petition drive in PA, I would have docked the pay of anyone who came in with low validity. It is a standard practice on a lot of professional petition drives for a coordinator or proponent to set an acceptable validity rate, which is usually around 70%-75%, and anyone who comes in with validity below whatever the agreed up acceptable validity threshold is gets their pay docked. If a petitioner comes in with bad validity for multiple batches of signatures this petitioner may end up getting fired, but even if they don’t get fired, their pay will be docked, and they won’t be high on the list of people to call the next time there is petition work, if they ever get called to work again at all.
I’ve found that the “babysitting” approach that I mentioned above is not as necessary when you only hire experienced proven petitioners, and in particular as it relates to the Libertarian Party, petitioners who are also libertarians.
I would avoid hiring inexperienced people, particularly inexperienced people who are strictly mercenaries and are not libertarians. I’m not saying don’t hire new people at all, but what I am saying is that if you hire any new people they should not make up the majority of your petitioners, and you should make them prove themselves before you put them on any other jobs. I would also take the approach for any Libertarian Party or other libertarian project, of hiring as many libertarians as possible, and I would only hire non-libertarians if there were not enough libertarians who were willing to do the job.
There are some good non-libertarian petitioners out there who are mercenaries, but the problem is that you can’t trust all of these people. Some of them are OK and I’m not opposed to hiring them to “fill in the gaps” if enough libertarians can’t be found to do a job, however, some of these people CAN NOT BE TRUSTED. Some of them will pull scams, such as lying about the petition, intentionally getting invalid signatures to pad their numbers so they can get paid more money (as in they won’t screen petition signers, which means they’ll have anyone sign (as in getting signatures from people who are not registered voters in the state), and they won’t even bother to check to see if the person filled out the petition correctly), or asking for an advance on pay or expense money and then not producing or paying back the money. This is known as “taking advantage” of a campaign. Another scam some of these people pull is that they hire people to work under them (often times these people are naive newbies and/or bums off the street, but sometimes they will be other experienced mercenary petitioners whom they know off of the petition circuit), and then they rip them off on their pay. I know of situations where people have gotten ripped off on their pay by one of these individuals and the people who got ripped off thought that it was the Libertarian Party who ripped them off, when it was actually a mercenary contractor working for the Libertarian Party who ripped them off. These people basically have little to no ethical standards and I would recommend avoiding them like the plague.
The mercenary contractor out of Philadelphia went to Illinois for a few weeks this year, and while this person was there they brought in some mercenary pros out of California that they know off of the petition circuit. These are people who typically get good validity when they know that they are being checked, however, in Illinois they thought that they could “take advantage” of the Libertarian Party of Illinois and get away with it, so they intentionally padded their numbers by not screening petition signers (as in they had anyone sign instead of asking only Illinois registered voters to sign). They turned in a lot of signatures that were of horrible validity. Fortunately, somebody in the LP of Illinois was diligent enough to run a validity check on their signatures, so they got caught. I know damn well that these people knew exactly what they were doing, and I know that at least one of them admitted to having “worked the petition like a plebiscite” (as in just having anyone sign). The LP of Illinois had set an acceptable validity rate of 67%, and anyone who fell below that was supposed to either have their pay docked on pay money back, or collect extra signatures without pay to make up for the bad ones. After these people got caught with bad validity, I know that there were make up signatures that were collected (I assume that it was enough to make up for the bad validity), but the fact remains that if nobody in the LP of Illinois had been on the ball enough to catch them that they would have gotten away with it.
The fact that Bill Redpath handed out an sweetheart, monopoly contract to one mercenary contractor in Philadelphia was a disaster waiting to happen. The fact of the matter is that all of the incentives were set up to produce poor results. Hell, it shouldn’t take an economics major to figure this one out. Let me break it down for everyone:
1) Since there were no libertarians who worked there, nobody there really cared about the party. They viewed it as an opportunity to make a quick buck and that’s it. So they didn’t really care that much about validity, they only cared about getting paid, and they damn sure didn’t care about doing any libertarian outreach/party building, or going to districts outside of the Philadelphia area (it was “too inconvenient” for them).
2) The incentive for the mercenary contractor was to hire only people whom they could take an override off of their signatures, and the bigger the override the better. So there were petitioners working in Philadelphia who were getting paid .75 cents or $1 per signature, which meant that the mercenary contractor got to pocket overrides of $1.25-$1 off of these people. Multiply that by thousands of signatures and it equals a lot of money for the mercenary contractor. Experienced petitioners, particularly ones who had worked for the Libertarian Party before, and even more particularly ones who were also Libertarians and had worked Libertarian Party petitions before, found the idea of having to part of the pay for the signatures go to pay an override to this mercenary contractor to be degrading and unnecessary, because it was a Libertarian Party petition drive and they had already proven themselves to the Libertarian Party. So no high quality proven petitioner with the Libertarian Party really wanted to work on this drive given the conditions which had been set forth by the mercenary contractor and backed up by Bill Redpath. So what tends to happen when you lower the pay to the workers? You also lower the results of their work, and this is exactly what happened with the LP petition drive in Pennsylvania in 2012.
3) The work from this crew of mercenaries wasn’t even being checked, at least for the first several weeks, and they were being paid on time and quickly. After one dedicated LP member in Philadelphia started to check their work and blew the whistle on the bad validity, nobody suffered any penalties, and the same crew got hired back to gather more signatures which were outside of the original budget! One would think that their pay would have been docked, or their would have been a demand to pay back pay to make up for the high rate of invalid signatures, or their would have been a demand to gather volunteer signatures at a higher validity rate to make up for the bad validity, or to work at a lower pay rate to make up for the bad validity, or something like this, but I don’t know of any penalties that were handed out.
The Libertarian Party had to spend a bunch of money that would not have even been necessary had the original batch of signatures that were budgeted for had been at a decent validity rate. They had 35,000 signatures. Hell, the validity could have gone all the way down to 59% at that time and the Libertarian Party would have still made the Pennsylvania ballot. It’s not that hard to get good validity in Pennsylvania. I’ve looked up the statistics for voter registration in Pennsylvania, and around 66% of the people in Pennsylvania are registered voters. Petitioning in Philadelphia can NOT be used as an excuse for bad validity either, because I looked up the statistics for Pennsylvania on a county by county basis, and I found that Philadelphia (which is its own county) has an average percentage of its population as registered voters for Pennsylvania at around 66%. So it’s not like Pennsylvania, or even just Philadelphia, has a low rate of voter registration. This compares favorably with states that have a much lower percentage of their populations as registered voters, such as California which has 47% of its people registered to vote, or Wyoming which has only 37% of its people being registered voters. So if anyone makes the claim that the validity was low because the petitioners worked in Philadelphia know that it is nothing more than a BS excuse.
4) I think that the validity was low for two main reasons:
a) Incompetence. There were people who had never petitioned before and who didn’t really know what all it takes to get good validity; and,
b) Dishonesty. There were people who were intentionally having anyone sign the petition rather than screening for only currently registered Pennsylvania voters as signers, and making sure that they signed the petition properly and who put the street address that appeared on their voter registration. These people were pulling a scam so they could pad their numbers and make more money.
I’m NOT saying that everyone who worked on the drive in Pennsylvania fell into one of the two categories I just mentioned above. Given that there were a lot of petitioners who worked on this drive, some of them likely did the job correctly. I’m just pointing out that there were enough petitioners who fell into either category a) or category b) that it brought down the validity rate for the entire group.
5) The petition drive in Pennsylvania could have been done correctly from the beginning, yet every attempt at doing the job correctly was either stymied or ignored. How much money did the Libertarian Party squander because of this? How much stress did Libertarian Party members have to suffer through because of this? How much extra time did Libertarian Party members have to waste because of this? Just think of how much opportunity to do Libertarian outreach ended up being squandered by not allowing all of the proven libertarian petitioners who were already in Pennsylvania, and/or who were willing to go to Pennsylvania, to work on the drive and to be treated fairly. Ask yourself, was it worth it to conduct the petition drive in this manner, or was would the plan that I suggested multiple times the more rationale and efficient course of action for the execution of the LP of PA petition drive?
Blaming the Republicans only goes so far here as well. We should already know that the Republicans and the Democrats are corrupt, and that they play dirty. They are the ones who pass these ballot access laws in the first place. It should come as no surprise when petition signatures get challenged. The Libertarian Party should ALWAYS be prepared for a signature challenge. Blaming it all on the Republicans is like jumping in what is known beforehand what is known to be shark infested water, and then acting surprised when one gets attacked by a shark, and not bringing a spear gun or a knife or anything else with you that would be helpful in such a situation. Sharks bite. Why? Because they are sharks and that’s what they do. Republicans play dirty politics. Why? Because they are Republicans and that’s what they do.
The same thing that I said about the Republicans is also true for the Democrats. The Libertarian Party (as well as any other minor party or independent candidate) should ALWAYS be prepared for attacks from the Democrats and Republicans. Failure to prepare is nothing short of foolish. The Libertarian Party has been involved in ballot access for 40 years now. There is simply no excuse for the party to not be better prepared for situations like this. I think that it is rather disgraceful that the Libertarian Party has not had 50 state plus DC ballot access since either 2000 or 1996 (depending on how you want to count it, since the party did technically have 50 state plus DC access in 2000, they just had a different candidate for President on the ballot in Arizona than in the rest of the nation). There is simply no legitimate excuse for the Libertarian Party to not have 50 state plus DC ballot access by this point in the party’s history, at least during Presidential election years. Failure to achieve this has been a combination of incompetence, and in some cases, corruption.
Here’s what I wonder: Have Libertarian Party members learned anything from this fiasco (and yes, even though it appears that the Libertarian Party has survived the challenge, it is only due to the fact that they turned in such a huge volume of signatures, and I’d still label the entire thing as a fiasco), or is the party going to continue to do stupid things like this in the future?
Andy, Just so you know, you were not the only one saying this. Many of us have preaching this for years. And believe me, Bill Redpath clearly understands these circumstances now.
“Richard Schwarz Says:
October 11th, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Andy, Just so you know, you were not the only one saying this. Many of us have preaching this for years. And believe me, Bill Redpath clearly understands these circumstances now.”
If he clearly understands it now, why did it take him so long to understand this? Shouldn’t it be obvious? It certainly seems obvious to me.
May I suggest a simple solution? Ballot access drives should be the primary responsibility of the state parties. When the LP VA did their petition drive, they called on their membership to carry out the petition drive (had to). If each LPVA member got 25 or so signatures, they would have enough signatures. I managed to turn in 17 petitions containing 160 signatures to the state ballot access committee. I would strongly encourage the state LPs to follow VA’s lead and rely primarily on their membership to complete the petition drives.
“Daniel Says:
October 11th, 2012 at 6:34 pm
May I suggest a simple solution? Ballot access drives should be the primary responsibility of the state parties. When the LP VA did their petition drive, they called on their membership to carry out the petition drive (had to). If each LPVA member got 25 or so signatures, they would have enough signatures. I managed to turn in 17 petitions containing 160 signatures to the state ballot access committee. I would strongly encourage the state LPs to follow VA’s lead and rely primarily on their membership to complete the petition drives.”
One problem with that is that different states have different ballot access requirements, and some of them are more difficult than others. Libertarians who live in states with difficult ballot access are at a serious disadvantage. Also, different state parties have different levels of strength. There’s nothing wrong with the national party and/or Libertarians in other states helping a state party out with ballot access. The bottom line is that no matter who is doing it, it needs to be conducted in a rational and efficient manner.
I do generally favor the national party sending any funds for ballot access to the states to administer themselves, as it usually works out better that way. I certainly think that Pennsylvania would have been handled better this year if that had been the case.
Is this Andy, who is a great petitioner and Kevin’s brother? I worked with Kevin and want to say that he did an outstanding job, principly in central PA. If the quality of the work of Philadelphia crew were anywhere near his fine work, the Constitution Party would be on the ballot in Pennsylvania today.
And if your not Kevin’s brother, everything I said about Kevin is still true! 🙂
“Gary Odom Says:
October 12th, 2012 at 6:40 am
Is this Andy, who is a great petitioner and Kevin’s brother? I worked with Kevin and want to say that he did an outstanding job, principly in central PA. If the quality of the work of Philadelphia crew were anywhere near his fine work, the Constitution Party would be on the ballot in Pennsylvania today.
And if your not Kevin’s brother, everything I said about Kevin is still true! :-)”
Yes, and I’m the one who trained him to petition.:)
Andy, thank you for taking the time to point out the problems and the solutions. I appreciate your dedication to excellence. The Libertarian Party needs to learn from this experience.
“George Whitfield Says:
October 12th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Andy, thank you for taking the time to point out the problems and the solutions. I appreciate your dedication to excellence. The Libertarian Party needs to learn from this experience.”
You are welcome. I just hope that the Libertarian Party as a whole learns something from this and does not repeat the same mistakes in the future, and I hope that my suggestions are actually implemented.
Let me first state my agreement with Andrew Jacobs, the most honest and dedicated Libertarian Party activist and ballot access petitioner I’ve met. We may both write long screeds that noone reads, but if people bothered to read them, they could learn something.
Either of us could write a book about the way that centralized power corrupts, even within our own political party, the party of life, evolution, and the market, the Libertarian Party (although, the CP ran a more libertarian candidate than Bob Barr in 2008). I worked in PA in 2004, under Bill Redpath. The drive was administered in a fair and efficient manner, and it was successful. This was before Scott Kohlhaas ripped off petition circulators Andrew Jacobs, Paulie Cannoli(pseudonym), Gary Fincher, and Mark Pickens, over Nebraska LP ballot access in 2006. I defended their position in 2008 (and called attention to corruption and incompetence in the Barr Campaign from Russell Verney, Shane Cory, etc…), and asked Kohlhaas to reconcile with them. This resulted in them being placed on Scott Kohlhaas’s “blacklist” when they vocally insisted on being paid (in retrospect, it looks like that was a strategic mistake on their part. Sad, when insisting on fair and proper treatment results in a blacklist from your own “free market” political party…). The LNC covered Kohlhaas’s debt to them a year later, without covering any late fees or costs incurred by the lateness, and without noting that Kohlhaas was in the wrong.
(See: http://www.lp.org/archives/lnc20070721.pdf -page 14) Kohlhaas was never held accountable in any way, which then incentivized him (and his friend Bill Redpath) to (usually) stop hiring us. (I am grateful that they made an exception and hired me for AL this year. In that case, I was generally treated fairly, although we are still waiting for full payment from the Johnson campaign.) …The full story’s online and you can read all about it. Generally, the donors of the LP don’t really care if their ballot access petitioners are treated fairly, and view them all as an annoying nuisance, drawing no distinction between paid activists and paid mercenaries. This lack of discrimination has crippled the LP, in terms of its electoral viability.
The result of this blacklist has been financial hardship for the blacklisted petitioners who relied on being rehired by the LP, having gone “all in” for the profession of pro-freedom political activists. The result for the LP has been failure to hire the best, and corresponding failure to access the ballot. The LP’s failures to access 4 states and DC in 2008 were the result of this “blacklist.” The LP’s two failures this year were a result of the same blacklist (Kohlhaas prevented us all from being hired in OK, where the LP missed ballot access by less than 10,000 signatures –something we surely would have gotten, had we been ALLOWED to work there).
I guess what we’re saying is: rely on talented libertarians who are loyal to the LP, or fail. PA was a failure in terms of ballot access, even if the PA LP makes it on the ballot, since they lost 3 congressional candidates and possibly as many as 5 state legislative candidates, by confining the petitioning work to Philadelphia. And it wasn’t just ballot access failure: it was failure to simultaneously extract value from the petitioning process, failure to create campus clubs, failure to put down-ticket candidates on the ballot at no additional cost (FOR FREE!), failure to refine the petitioning protocol, failure to collect interested party information, failure to recruit candidates, failure on a wide variety of strategic political technology fronts. See: Morton Blackwell’s quote: “Political technology is neutral…” for more information about optimized grassroots political organization. See also Kevin Kelly’s “Out of Control” and Hayek’s work on “Spontaneous Order,” about emergence-based decentralized systems (like political systems and economies).
In short: Without quality network nodes that communicate with each other, your network is worthless, and order fails to emerge. In our case, that order that fails to emerge is a politically libertarian system. That’s the reason we don’t have freedom in the USA.
With Daryl Bonner and his crew of petitioners (Democrats, unphilosophical mercenaries, etc…) doing petition circulation for the LP, there is no gain beyond possibly ballot access. This isn’t a fault of Daryl Bonner. He provides a certain service for a certain price: he will recruit unphilosophical people for bottom of the barrel prices, and make tons of money in overrides off of them, for the expense he incurs organizing them. The work won’t result in a libertarian revolution, nor will it build on prior years’ work. …It’s not designed to do that.
So far as I can see, it’s not Bonner’s fault. He’s always been clear about the services he offers, and what he is and isn’t willing to do. He wasn’t willing to put the regional state legislative and regional congressional district candidates on the ballot for free, as Andy’s brother, Andy, Paul, and myself were willing to do. He never said he was. He was given a position superior to our position, by virtue of the fact that he offered inferior product. He’d have been a fool not to agree to that deal!
The LP generally gets what it pays for, as does everyone. The fault isn’t Bonner’s. It’s the LP leadership’s fault that it doesn’t know what it needs to do to succeed.* (*Or it does know, and it’s being coerced by an external force to favor failure. This footnote should always be there, since “Only the paranoid survive.”)
I hope that eventually, the LP “gets smart” and begins acting in a rationally self-interested manner. But, to me, it looks like they don’t know what that would entail. In fact, it looks to me like the only way to get the LP to succeed at anything is to impose reality upon it in the form of external competition that offers the same thing they offer, at a lower price to the donors. (Sadly, the donors to the LP seem to have no idea how their money is being spent.) It’s possible that the Constitution Party, Justice Party, etc… could do this, but I doubt it, since they lack the ballot access the LP has.
@10 – “@9 – as much as I’d like the GOP to break out the checkbook, it would look bad for the Libertarian/Green/Constitution case against such fees if the L’s took the money.”
No, it wouldn’t, because if we fail, there’s a realistic chance we will pay out the money in 2016. Taking the money doesn’t preclude us fighting to eliminate the “loser pays system.” But if we don’t take the money, there’s no disincentive on the GOP (or Democrats, etc…) not to take us (and the other minor parties) to the cleaners in the future.
In this case, the Libertarian Party went into the petition drive believing that they’d be forced to pay a prohibitive speech-chilling and ballot-access-chilling penalty if they stood their ground and lost the court case. The Republican Party also believed this. Everyone involved believed this. The courts have previously upheld this, in the case where the Democrats knocked Nader off the ballot in PA in 2008. …There was noone involved who didn’t believe the system was structured as “loser pays.”
Now, I know that you can’t expect justice from a court. The chance of justice from most courts is generally about 10%, on any given day. I think the Libertarian Party should sue the living crap out of the Republicans in PA. It would be morally treasonous not to sue them, for the following reasons.
1) It will disincentivize future major party attacks, even if the courts deny us the larger justice of changing the system. If the court upholds the “loser pays” precedent, then we’ve shown that when the Republicans try to knock us off the ballot, they still have something to lose. In short, we make ourselves “not worth bullying,” no matter how the court case comes out. So, if we try both, and fail at one, we at least win something. This goes against the prevailing failing libertarian psychology (and strategy) of “all or nothing,” which is another subsumed reason why it’s so intelligent to pursue legal action. It would keep our enemies guessing, and on the defensive, and it would make us a more dangerous and unpredictable foe.
2) It’s very possible that we could win both cases, eliminate the unfair requirements AND the “loser pays” system: simultaneously forcing the Republicans to pay through the nose for their anti-democratic actions, and eliminating the harsh PA ballot access requirements in one fell swoop. Always enter a war with a strategy that allows the possibility of a total victory. If we don’t sue them, we’re entering the battlefield with part of our winning potential already “impossible.” Always have an optimax strategy that sets you up for multiple victories, if you’re stronger than you think you are, or your enemies are weaker than you think they are. Always have multiple “fall-back positions” for yourself –a “gracefully decaying” strategy.
3) The only way to get a modicum of fairness or decent treatment from the mainstream power parties, including the GOP, is to give them something to be afraid of. This is also the only way to get a modicum of fairness from the courts who serve those power parties. …Otherwise, they thank you very kindly for being timid and weak, and laugh the next time they bully you. As the current executive director for the Libertarian Party, Carla Howell, has often (and rightfully) said, “Weakness invites aggression.” If we back down and don’t sue them for costs, we are simply sending them the message that we’re weak, and that we are going to go into battle from a defensive position, even when we hold offensive strength. We’d be making this mistake by trying to remove a legal situation for us in the future that is ALSO fighting from a defensive position. They only respect or fear OFFENSE. (Historically, since partisan hacks on the IL division of elections kept the IL LP off the ballot in 1998, this has been 100% true. After losing the lawsuit, the IL GOP hasn’t tried very hard to knock us off the ballot, because they don’t want to be swallowing their own teeth. Just think about it realistically: the people working for the GOP are sociopaths –they don’t care about what’s right: the only thing that keeps them in line is the realistic likelihood of retaliation for their actions.)
4) It doesn’t hurt our case to attempt both! We were laboring under the knowledge that we’d be forced to pay if we lost. That’s true whether or not we agree with the system or want to change it! The “Republicans” were intent on making us pay if we lost. _We would have paid if we lost._ So, even if we oppose that unjust system, we are perfectly intellectually consistent if we injure the hell out of the grotesque Republican police state apparatus, and then say “we shouldn’t have been able to do that, the system that places us in conflict is wrong.” It’s just like if a rapist who had been released from prison early to make room for a marijuana offender tried to rape our sister, after planting drugs on her, and we shot him in the groin and proved that he had planted the drugs, and when the police arrived we said to them: “We shouldn’t have had the opportunity to do that, because he shouldn’t have been out running around! Further, he shouldn’t go to jail for planting drugs on our sister, because drugs should be legal. Of course, we don’t want our sister to go to jail, and if anyone is going to go to jail for drugs, it couldn’t happen to a more despicable person. That said, the _system_ itself is unfair, and unjust, and we want it changed. …But until it is changed, we sure as hell aren’t going to be victimized by it, or the people who attempt to abuse it.” In that case, we’ve still taken the moral highground, we still have logic on our side, we still have reason on our side. (The 2008 Green Party’s sister was also raped by this guy, and she’s still in jail because he planted drugs on her, too. All we need to do is point to her situation, to argue against “loser pays.” She suffered the same “double loss” of being victimized and paying for it, that we ALMOST suffered.) …And we haven’t emboldened future rapists and frame-up artists in the future by backing down. Those who attack the rationale of the game, and not the players, are the most effective adversaries…
Moreover, if the system isn’t changed, we still want this rapist (the PA GOP) to be sentenced to 50 years in prison, because if he’s not, we still have to deal with him in the future. While he’s in prison, nothing stops us from saying “He should be in prison for rape and attempted framing, not drug possession.”
In fact, from that position of victory/power (the rapist neutralized in prison, or the GOP neutralized by fear of further loss), we can be better advocates for changing the ballot access laws (after all, we’ve just flushed the money spent on our lawyers down the drain, if we don’t force our illegitimate attackers to recoup our losses caused by the attack). In the prior analogy, we’re advocating for changing the drug laws from behind bars. We’re the person who got punished, by interacting with a winning force, winning, and then relinquishing our victory to an undeserving opponent who now sees absolutely no reason not to try to knock us off the ballot in 2016 and beyond.
In politics, as in war, if you hesitate to destroy your enemy, you’re simply giving him the ability to destroy you. And make no mistake about it, the party of elected politicians like Bob Barr, Lindsay Graham, Orrin Hatch, and Newt Gingrich LOVES PUTTING PEOPLE BEHIND BARS. It emboldens them to steal from a defenseless victim. They do not hesitate to destroy the innocent. So, when the innocent get a chance to give them a beat-down, the innocent should take it. Libertarians do not oppose retaliatory force, they oppose aggression. They can consistently engage in retaliatory force while taking a position against systems that encourage aggression. It’s a teachable moment.
Moreover, it means that there is a victory struck for the Green Party and other minor parties and independents in the future. The attackers of open ballot access now have something to fear from their ballot access challenges, and the losers can threaten to “do what the Libertarian Party did in 2012.” That alone MIGHT de facto change the laws in the manner we sought!(See also, Reason #6.)
5) Politically, this year, in 2012, it makes a boatload of political sense for us to attack the Republican Party in a swing state full of Ron Paul supporters, to destroy them in any way possible, and never back down one bit. This amounts to a sub-victory, especially if Mitt Romney then loses PA by less than our vote total. Maybe they lost because they had to pull hands away from campaigning to put out the LP ballot access fire. If so, …Great!
When someone’s running a campaign, and their attack of the innocent blows up in their faces, they have to put out fires while trying to run that campaign. This also allows Gary Johnson to speak in PA, and generate a ton of media coverage there that will be supported AND COVERED by the Democrats and their courtesan press! As soon as the microphone is handed to him, he can say “I’m the only pro-gun candidate in the race. I’m the only drug legalization advocate in the race. I’m the only anti-war candidate in the race. I’m the only candidate in the race who wants to get rid of the Federal Reserve and finish what Ron Paul started, so our kids aren’t born into debt.” He only gets that microphone handed to him by blackening the eyes of the thoroughly corrupt PA GOP political establishment. He makes statements to the effect of “Well, the GOP tried to prevail at the ballot box by denying you a choice. If that’s what it means to be a Republican, the party sure has changed since I was a fiscally conservative Republican governor of New Mexico!”
The mainstream GOP is sociopathic, feral, primitive, and unphilosophical. …Rub their noses in their mess: it’s the only way to get them to stop messing the floor. A bully only responds to a kid who can swing back and embarrass them. All the better if the bully picks a fight with a kid who overreacts and puts him in the hospital. (As an aside, I think it’s amusing that there was a kid like that who I knew about. He damaged the hell out of a bully once, and interestingly, that bully didn’t bully anyone else either, after being beaten down. So, by one person standing up to aggression, the overall system was improved.)
6) It’s likely that the PA GOP and courts (a united entity) will only eliminate the loser-pays system if it blows up in their faces. It’s also likely that they won’t change the rules at all, if we don’t pursue damages, since they aren’t operating with our rulebook. Libertarians repeatedly underestimate the sliminess of their opposition. Our opposition is sociopathic, and united in sociopathy. We need to get wise to the fact that they have no morals or integrity, and stop being “surprised” by it like small children playing peek-a-boo. Those who advocate not suing the PA GOP are like battered wives, taking the side of their abusive husbands, so he can kill them later on.
If we “go into battle” holding only “the moral highground” when all our enemies are holding spears, we’re likely to find out just how scary and intimidating the moral highground is to them, …as we feel the business ends of a lot of spears. (ie: “Thanks for not suing the ass off of us, chumps! We sure are thankful you’re too stupid to land the “coup de grace” when you’ve got the chance! If the situation’s reversed two or four years from now, we’ll really enjoy admiring your caved-in skull! We’ll really enjoy watching you get delegitimized in the press and the eyes of the general public by being knocked off the ballot and paying for it! Shoulda owned us when you had the chance!”)
7) If we win the court case for damages, it will send the GOP into a shambles of re-organization and infighting, as the party tries to distance itself from the jerks who were trying to force us to pay. These will be highly-paid operatives, and this will generate infighting in a group of sociopaths who denied Ron Paul the nomination. It will be a further message, if and when Romney loses, to the Republican Party: “Change your corrupt ways, or die.” If nothing else, it will hurt the sociopathic GOP that currently holds power, bringing them down in power and status, closer to the Ron Paul GOP that they recently vanquished. Our pummeling of them in court would be a pressure towards correction of the system, based on feedback, which is a powerful feature of a system in transition to justice. (One of technology philosopher Kevin Kelly’s “Nine Laws of God” in his book, “Out of Control.” “Change changes itself. This is what large systems do: they coordinate change. When extremely large systems are built out of coordinated systems, then each system begins to influence and ultimately change the organization of other systems. That is, if the rules of the game are composed from the bottom up, then it is likely that the interacting forces at the bottom level will alter the rules of the game as it progresses.” So, like the 1848 Free Soil Party placing pressure on the Republican Party, we are now putting pressure on the 2012 Republican Party, as both a positive incentive and a negative incentive. On one hand, we’re saying “Be like us, get serious about combining social tolerance with economic freedom. Get serious about cutting government spending. We’ll teach you the role of the farmer, if you like.” On the other hand we’re saying: “If you’re not like us, we’re not going to roll around in the mud with you, since you’re content with playing the part of the pig. …But we’ll be happy to slaughter you if you keep trying to get us dirty.”)
In short: Slaughtering the pig isn’t “becoming like the pig.” It’s imposing a superior system on an inferior system.
My vote: Let’s slaughter these Grotesque Ornery Pigs, as opposed to crawling into their pen on our hands and knees and trying to reason with them.
Jake,
You and Andy do make good points but you need to summarize them better for the people that are not going to read that amount of writing.
Feel free to use my real name at this point.
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2012/09/paul-frankels-candidate-statement-re-libertarian-national-committees-open-at-large-position/
And, yes, that is as far as I made it through your comment myself. I too suffer from an unfortunate deficit attention disorder, though not as badly as many Americans and younger people of all nationalities.
Let me first state that I like Chuck Moulton, and generally think he’s a good guy.
I address his closing comments here:
Chuck Moulton: “Going forward the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania absolutely must hire better petitioners,”
My reply: Better petitioners were told they could make .75/signature, working under a Democrat named Daryl Bonner. So, not only would we be putting regional LP candidates on the ballot (an immense value to the LP, since the highest offices the LP has ever held were 4 state legislative seats in AK, =1/10 of the AK house, and “on the way” to being able to have a nullification majority), we would be paid far less than Bonner for doing this extra work, which, in some districts, would equal not only a state legislative candidate, but also a congressional candidate. Had Kevin Jacobs, Andy’s brother, been offered Daryl Bonner’s rate, he would have put the LP congressional candidate on the ballot in that district (instead he put the CP congressional candidate on the ballot there, since they weren’t insulting his intelligence with their offer, and were glad to have his extra work ethic). All this is after those same better petitioners were hired in 2004, and paid $1.75/signature, plus expenses (a rate comparable to what Bonner got in 2012). So, the LP basically did what the Post Office does to encourage all their postal shootings (where the term “going postal” comes from): they fired the superior quality, less expensive labor and hired and promoted the inferior quality labor at greater expense to themselves, out of political allegiance (nepotism). Then, the LP told the superior quality labor (labor that is also ideologically committed to libertarianism) that they would be occupying a subordinate status to the inferior labor, ie: that the inferior labor would be “their boss” and would take credit for “overseeing” their work and “managing” them, when the opposite would be the case. Is it any wonder the LP has almost nothing to show for 40 years of existence if this is how they conduct themselves? (We don’t have a majority in a single state legislature, because that’s not a priority to the LP. They typically won’t even listen to our suggestions when we call them and inform them about opportunities for sudden growth. It’s just another mindless committee.)
Moulton continues: “do validity checks, only pay for valid signatures,”
The industry standard is to pay for everything that’s above 70% validity. If the LP wants to make certain that it never gets on the ballot again, then they could “only pay for valid signatures.” This is what some petition drives do, so if Moulton meant to say “only pay for signatures above a realistic validity threshold,” then, I’d agree with him.
If a petitioner is working hard, handing out LP literature, and building the LP, no matter how weak an area is on voter registration, they can stay above 70% validity. If you don’t pay for some percentage of invalid signatures, you don’t get quality workers, because your effort is seen as “nickel and diming” the workers on something that’s relatively difficult to quantify. This also doesn’t allow petitioners to plan their activity level, nor does it reward what is often very hard work (It’s not that it’s harder than working on a construction crew, for instance, it’s that very few people have both the physique to withstand the work, and the intelligence level necessary to engage petition signers. If you’re smart enough to do this job well, you’re smart enough to get a better job.). Moreover, there is a huge difference between 70% and the often less than 30% validity of Bonner’s crew. Things are relatively optimal at paying for everything at or above 70% –hard workers believe the numbers are fair, and you reserve the right to hire back those who have the highest percentages above 70% first. (Andy and Paul are usually at around 80-85% validity.) Moreover, there are tons of dishonest “petition coordinators” who claim that petitioners’ numbers are lower than 70%, in order to screw them out of money from the “proponent” (in this case, the Libertarian Party) and pocket the money. Sometimes validity checks are done incorrectly, and the LP is not immune from hiring morons who will screw up a validity check. Therefore, it’s better protocol to pay for all collected signatures, and dismiss people whose validity is unacceptable.
Moulton: “and insist some paid petitioners be located outside of Philadelphia.”
My reply: The Party didn’t need to “insist” this. We offered it to them on a silver platter, along with something around 85% validity, for well over 2 years, and onward up to and through the entire petitioning cycle. For months, and months, and months, they rejected our offer. …Thanks for nothing!
Moulton: “Further, the best way to get volunteer signatures is to run a boatload of candidates for lower level office (like State Representative and U.S. Congress), so I strongly encourage the LPPA to focus on candidate recruitment for 2016.”
My reply: Damn it, they didn’t and don’t need to “focus on candidate recruitment”!!!! The candidates were already recruited! They already wanted to run! We wanted to put them on the ballot! They were basically told “Daryl Bonner refuses to work outside the Pittsburgh area, and the LP (that is, Scott Kohlhaas and Bill Redpath) has a vendetta against Andy Jacobs, Paulie Cannolie (now an alternate on the LNC), Jake Witmer, and Mark Pickens.” We were the people who put the LP on the ballot in 2004. Andy was putting regional candidates on the ballot in PA in 2008, when he was ordered to “stand down” (leave the state) by ranting incompetent lunatic Sean Haugh, so Sean could give the entire state deal to his pal, Daryl Bonner. Then, the same mistake was repeated in 2012. Well, Andy wasn’t told to leave the state, precisely. He was just told that his pay was being reduced, after he was contractually promised a higher rate, and that the amount his pay was being reduced by would go to Daryl Bonner, so Bonner could get rich and enhance his reputation off of Andy’s hard work and initiative and extra-effort. Whatever. The LP is basically a bunch of wannabe aloof plutocrat pricks who simply aren’t in the same league as the aloof plutocrat pricks in the GOP. It’s “GOP light” the way it’s being run right now.
Moulton: “Volunteer signatures are worth their weight in gold compared to the crappy paid signatures I saw the last few weeks.”
my reply: Chuck, I basically agree with you, but you’ve set up a false dichotomy that really annoys me. Andy, Paulie, Mark and my vastly better quality signatures (and entire, overall efforts) that cost the same as Daryl’s purely mercenary signatures were continually rejected. Moreover, the PA LP doesn’t have anything close to the number of volunteer signatures necessary to access the ballot.
Did we want to get paid for our efforts? Yes. And we should have been hired and paid for our efforts. If Andy, Paul, Mark, and myself, have quit petitioning in four years, because we got nothing but a long stream of inferior treatment and insults for going above and beyond the minimum requirements, then the LP will have lost even the chance to BEGIN doing what they should have had the sense to do years ago: hire the best, and pay them the best, keep open communication lines, and get the best results.
Instead it’s all nepotism and backstabbing and generally, what we’ve come to expect from the lowest-common-denominator mainstream political parties. The very worst results, extravagant wasting of donor money, and a kicking screaming fit to barely make the ballot (with only the party slate, and a fraction of the local candidates who were interested in running). As far as “in the field” candidate recruitment, campus club building, meetup-group starting, local party building, email signup sheet collection, database building, and movement building? Forget it.
If you insult your activist base, and by extension your donor base, long enough, eventually you’ll find out that your political party and political movement doesn’t exist. You’ll find that it’s a 41 year old case of “failure to thrive.”
Do you want the LP’s ballot access to be a raging success in 2016? Call up Andy Jacobs, myself, Paulie Cannoli, Mark Pickens, and Bob Lynch, and hire us to gain ballot access in all 50 states. Don’t call us after we’ve committed to other projects, call us up now, sign the contract, and send us the money, and watch the LP grow into a serious political presence in 4 years.
Shift the emphasis from flying all over the nation to LNC meetings, hold the meetings via skype, and move that focus toward coming up with a workable plan to take power from the American police state.
We’re the guys who’ve gotten it done in the past, and we can get it done in the future. That is, assuming we’re hired and paid at a rate comparable to the one that Democrat mercenaries are paid.
To his credit, Scott Kohlhaas has also gotten things done in the past. For instance, the number one advantage he has over us, is the fact that he stole the National LP’s fundraising database, from the time he worked at the National LP’s HQ doing fundraising calls. This has made him the LP’s number one fundraiser for a period of years. If we had that list, we could do fundraising, too. And, we could do fundraising for less than the 40-50% commission Kohlhaas charges. Heck, send the 10% difference towards libertarian literature, signage, and video editing to hand out and display to petition signers, and watch people (and new donors!) actually join the LP during a petition drive.
A political party’s petitioners are often the only interaction the public has with a political party. If the petitioners are a bunch of drunks and idiots, then petition signers are going to say to themselves: “Ah, this party isn’t serious. I shouldn’t be involved in it, because they’re offering me the chance to upset the powers that be, and then get left, high and dry, to weather political retaliation from local political forces by myself.”
Most people have very crude political philosophies that are not consistent philosophical edifices, but a hodge-podge of single issues. Often, those single issues are self-contradictory. If there are people in the field who are _leading_ the way to individual freedom, then people will follow, if it looks like we have a chance of success. The _apparent_ chance of success is key, because most people aren’t interested in philosophy, they are “hide-bound” pragmatists.
Simple heuristics determine whether a typical petition signer will support us. It’s not the same mix for everyone, but here are a few important ones:
1) Have they heard of us before? 2) Do we have anyone elected to significant office? (anything less than state legislator doesn’t count to the average joe) 3) What can we realistically offer to them? (welfare, a realistic payout of increased justice, better protection of gun rights, etc…) 4) Do they like the petition circulator? (Is the petition circulator professional-looking, intelligent, sober, able to answer questions? etc…) 5) Do they want to be like the petitioner, do they respect the petition circulator? (Powerful people don’t follow weak people.) 6) Did the petition circulator make a good case for libertarianism? 7) Did the petition circulator destroy their kneejerk “objections” or “objection arguments” in favor of uninvolvement or non-signing of the petition?
Most people make these judgments as “heuristics” to decide whether to get involved. It’s just like someone in threadbare clothes who obviously hasn’t taken a shower in weeks claiming to have “the secret to success and good health.” In some cases, the message SHOULD be viewed in isolation from the messenger, …but it never is. If a person is outside selling a high-level political philosophy, but they look like a low-level person —FAIL. The petition signer may sign the petition, but they would never consider joining the party if the party is represented poorly.
The more complex and politically-interested someone is, the more they will question the petition circulator, and the greater gain we potentially have from engaging them. In some cases, such complex people will become interested and activated big-L Libertarians.
I posit that getting the very most possible out of petition circulation is a good idea, and, in fact, a unified message, on the street, from the Libertarian Party is the only thing that will actually take power away from the political elite in the USA. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve been part of a political groundswell (that was, interestingly enough, financed by Scott Kohlhaas, in AK).
I don’t want to supplant the entire LP, I want to redirect their petitioning dollars to activities and activists that are fruitful and efficient. I want incentivized benchmarks of productivity.
For those to whom these are alien concepts, I strongly suggest the book “The Science of Success” by Charles Koch. There’s a reason why the man is a billionaire, and it wasn’t just inheriting his father’s company. Moreover, whether you like him or dislike him, the organizational wisdom and standards in that book are very useful to those who want very specific results.
Without measuring what we’re doing, we will do nothing, and we will never incrementally improve our efforts. There has to be a “libertarian filter” on libertarian activists, if at all possible. (In cases where this isn’t possible, the LP should at least have a minimum set of measurable standards that constitute “doing the job well.”) Those who understand the concepts at a deep level and want individual liberty should be the ones training those who are new to the job -that’s patently obvious. (Otherwise, deficiencies can’t be noted until they are habits.)
Non-libertarian alcoholics, drug addicts, and other liberty-ambivalent people looking for a quick buck should be avoided; NOT handed clipboards so they can enrich people like Emmet Reistroffer and Daryl Bonner.
Going forward, I’d suggest that placing all eggs in the Redpath/Kohlhaas basket is a mistake. It pains me to say that, because those two people do know a lot about ballot access (Kohlhaas was the person who first showed me that it was possible to go out and make $150-$400 per day as a petitioner). …But they also let nepotism stand in the way of getting the job done, …and ballot access isn’t rocket science. Andy, Paul, Mark and myself can all report directly to the LNC, via skype or cell phone, and the LP can not only have 50 states plus DC of ballot access, we can have hundreds more state legislative candidates on the ballot, and hundreds more university campus clubs started. –Ballot access problems solved.
Again: everyone dances around Redpath and Kohlhaas like they’re warlocks in command of dark and mysterious arts of ballot access, when it’s nothing all that complex. Many of the states have a bunch of partisan hacks working at their division of elections. Some states have either well-meaning people who want more choices on the ballot, or people who ambivalently follow their interpretations of the law. In any case, ballot access depends on:
1) Having 1.5 times the required number of signatures, handed in early or on time. (less in ND, since there is no voter registration in ND, and less in WI, IA, and MI since anyone who is eligible to register to vote can sign the petition).
2) Having a detailed knowledge or “institutional memory” of the quirks of the individual states, and making absolutely certain that the petitions are made up correctly, filed correctly, built on precedent, etc…
3) Hiring people who take the petition circulation and party-building seriously, and optimize opportunities. (In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, at UA, for instance, the college libertarians merged with the Ron Paul revolution’s YAL, Young Americans for Liberty, and it was possible to add to their ranks a significant number of emails and contacts. Also, in AL and AZ, petitioning or ballot-access-via-registration work can be begun long in advance of the deadline, and can generate ongoing interest in the LP as a “value-added” project.)
The three prior things are just the bare minimum that Bill Redpath generally handles. Far more could be done simultaneously, if the LNC wanted to get the maximum money’s worth from LP donor dollars.
Of course, that would require some visionary people, on the order of John Lilburne, Sam Adams, or myself. …But if there’s no army with me, and noone as serious as the Founding Fathers were, I’m not going to go against the British, or the NDAA-enabled American Police state alone. Like most petition signers, I’m not happy to commit suicide. …But unlike most petition signers, I at least know what needs to happen for the LP to become a raging success.
It’s a process of building, one supporter after another, until the map and all political districts within it, are occupied by the LP and their candidates. It’s a process of occupying the courthouses with jury rights activists, and recruiting candidates who are in conflict with the system, comprehend its injustice, and want to take a stand against it.
It’s engaging the system with a high degree of activity, and measuring the results, and refining our approach to respond to those results.
Right now, my professional opinion is that the LP is not engaging the system (sociopaths, elected by conformists, who rule over everyone) as if we want individual freedom (libertarians, elected by conformists, who rule over violent criminals and leave everyone else free). We’re engaged as if we want to be involved in a parlor game that allows a few rather wealthy individuals to pat themselves on the back and claim to be hipsters as they fly around the country attending LNC meetings. And we have a level of individual freedom that corresponds to that commitment.
About $700,000 to $1,000,000 or so passes through the LNC every 4 years, with around 90% of that going towards ballot access.
It’s time to get more bang for our buck, or we’ll fold our tent and be subsumed by an unaccountable GOP’s “C4L,” which will then have no incentive to outcompete anyone, and has already shown signs of being irresponsible, according to solid libertarians like Tom Woods, Jr.
The Libertarian Party is a great opportunity to comparatively peacefully take power from the police state. Let’s not fail at the ballot box. That only leaves the soapbox, the cartridge box, and the jury box, all three of which are better defended themselves in conjunction with the ballot box. As libertarians we should be aware of this synergistic approach.
Freedom will not emerge from a top-down, command and control approach. It will be bottom-up, and emergent, or not at all. To govern the LP in the illiterate manner it’s been governed in is weak and ineffective.
It’s time for the LNC to listen to the people it hires, and not just write them off as “manual labor.”
“After losing the lawsuit, the IL GOP hasn’t tried very hard to knock us off the ballot, because they don’t want to be swallowing their own teeth. Just think about it realistically: the people working for the GOP are sociopaths –they don’t care about what’s right: the only thing that keeps them in line is the realistic likelihood of retaliation for their actions.)”
Actually, the Republicans in Illinois challenged the Libertarian Party of Illinois’ signatures in 2010. Fortunately, the LP of Illinois was able to survive that challenge.
Jake Witmer said: “Moulton continues: ‘do validity checks, only pay for valid signatures,’
The industry standard is to pay for everything that’s above 70% validity. If the LP wants to make certain that it never gets on the ballot again, then they could “only pay for valid signatures.” This is what some petition drives do, so if Moulton meant to say “only pay for signatures above a realistic validity threshold,” then, I’d agree with him.”
I concur with Jake here. If the Libertarian Party were to only pay for valid signatures, then the pay would have to increase dramatically, plus somebody would have to do a 100% validity check.
It is far more rational to set an acceptable minimum validity rate, say 70% as Jake suggested above, and pay for everything – minus a few obvious cross offs – as long as the validity rate meets the threshold of what is considered to be acceptable validity. It is not reasonable to expect anyone to get 100% validity. I’ve done it a few times, but only on small batches of signatures, or if I have gone door-to-door petitioning with a walking list, or petitioned at a polling place on election day (and note that it is still possible for signatures to not be considered valid even when one goes door-to-door with a walking list, or if one petitions at a polling place on election day, because some people will just flat out screw up their signature and you can’t catch everyone to get them to do it right).
If a petitioner is getting validity that is 70-75% or higher then it is obvious that they are trying to do the job properly.
Door-to-door petitioning with a walking list of registered voters is great for validity, but it is also slower than gathering signatures at a public venue, and the hours which you can gather signatures door-to-door is limited because most people aren’t home until at least 4 PM Monday-Friday, and it is considered to be rude to knock on somebody’s door past 9 PM, or to knock on somebody’s door too early on a Saturday or Sunday (I wouldn’t recommend starting on Saturday or Sunday until noon).
Really, if you stick to only hiring experienced, proven petitioners, and in particular, proven petitioners who are also supporters of your cause, then you can almost guarantee that the validity is going to be good.
Jake Witmer wrote: “the PA LP doesn’t have anything close to the number of volunteer signatures necessary to access the ballot.
I organized the LPPA ballot drives from 1992-1998, and have helped in every year since then. In the 90’s we routinely had enough local candidates to get us 15,000 volunteer signatures. No, not enough to get us on the ballot by themselves, but enough to take a huge amount of pressure off the paid drive. I believe that Chuck Moultan was suggesting we need to dedicate more effort to getting these candidates who will collect volunteer signatures. Doesn’t make sense to hire petitioners to get the local candidates on the ballot when they should be, and in the past have proven to be quite effectively, able to get on the ballot themselves.
A win is a win, but what I would give to have the challengers have to pay the Libertarian legal fees. At this point asking to review signatures that have already been agreed upon is an obvious waste of the court’s time, and there should be punishment as such.
Richard Schwarz said: “No, not enough to get us on the ballot by themselves, but enough to take a huge amount of pressure off the paid drive. I believe that Chuck Moultan was suggesting we need to dedicate more effort to getting these candidates who will collect volunteer signatures. Doesn’t make sense to hire petitioners to get the local candidates on the ballot when they should be, and in the past have proven to be quite effectively, able to get on the ballot themselves.”
I’ve gathered petition signatures that went toward getting district office candidates on the ballot in Pennsylvania. There’s no reason why paid petitioners can’t supplement the volunteer effort. As I said above, the minor party petitions in PA include both the state wide candidates and the district candidates on the same form, but the petitions are separated by county, so depending on what county one is in there could be different district office candidates on the petition. The bottom line is get as many volunteer signatures as possible and supplement them with paid signatures. If running more candidates for district offices means more volunteer signatures, then this is just another reason to run more people for district offices.