Third Party Watch

Ballot Access News

Rick Jore, the Constitution Party’s only state legislator, must leave the Montana legislature in a few weeks because of term limits. Voters in his district replaced him with a Democrat. The November 2008 election in the 12th House district was between Republican nominee Ron Marquardt, and Democratic nominee John Fleming. Fleming won with [...]

Ballot Access News

From preliminary election returns, it appears that these are the best counties for five particular presidential candidates:

Nader: Morgan County, Tennessee 5.2%
Barr: Esmeralda County, Nevada, 2.7%
Baldwin: Millard County, Utah, 5.6%
McKinney: either St. Bernard or LaFourche Parish, both in Louisiana, each 1.1%
Brian Moore: Essex County, Vermont, 2.1%

Thanks to Jack Ross for doing the laborious job [...]

The Green Party is weighing in on the historic debate over the merits of the Electoral College by filing suit in a US District Court. The Party claims that electing a president via apportionment of state electors effectively disenfranchises tens of thousands of voters (especially black voters in southern states) and may lead to [...]

From: Lowman Henry
Subject: Commentary- Ballotgate
Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2008, 2:51 PM

Ballotgate
State laws governing ballot access are scandalous

By Lowman S. Henry

A subplot to the Bonusgate scandal is the ongoing drama of what state Democrats did to prevent Ralph Nader and his Green Party from gaining a spot on the 2004 Presidential Election ballot. Attorney [...]

I am an independent voice speaking for each citizen, not for money, and not for special interests. I will return the voice of the individual to Washington.
Illinois Green Party’s Schafer.

Illinois Greens issue press release, Minnesota Green Party meeting.

Libertarian Green Party candidate for Congress Steve Lee Childs

Ron Paul finished third in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries tonight, but it looks like those showings of 8% and 7% respectively will be enough to push him past the one million vote mark.

As of this moment, Paul has added 60,757 votes to his total… with 15% of the votes still to be counted [...]

I was browsing several Secretary of State’s websites, when I trounced across California’s. I decided to take a look at the finalized primary results from February 5th. It was interesting to look at the numbers of each candidate, and especially how those votes corresponded for Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney in more than one primary.
Then [...]

The Libertarian Party held presidential preference primaries in two of the “Super Duper Tuesday” states—California and Missouri—yesterday.

In California, Christine Smith dominated the 12-candidate field with 25.2% of the votes cast (95% of precincts reporting). Steve Kubby placed second with 17%, followed by Wayne Allyn Root with 13.9%. No other candidate exceeded 10%. Full results from [...]

Recently there was a special runoff election in California State Assembly District 55, which is in the Long Beach area. Besides AIP candidate Charlotte Sadiyah Gibson, there was Libertarian candidate Herb Peters running against a lone Democratic candidate.

With little media coverage and no attention given, Charlotte nevertheless received 15.4% of the vote compaired to Herb’s [...]

The New York Times titled it: Paul Beats Giuliani (Again):

The bad news for Rudolph W. Giuliani Tuesday night in Michigan was that Representative Ron Paul of Texas appears to have beaten him handily again, just as he did in Iowa.

With 89 percent of the precincts reporting at 11:20 p.m., Mr. Giuliani was in a distant [...]

CNN has called the New Hampshire Republican primary for John McCain, with Mitt Romney back in second place. Here are some early results from about 12% of the precincts…

McCain – 9,952 (37% )
Romney – 7,673 (29%)
Huckabee – 3,236 (12%)
Giuliani – 2,508 [...]

Ballot Access News

Jefferson County, Iowa, was the stronghold of the Natural Law Party, while that party existed. The party was associated with the Maharishi and his Transcendental Meditation movement. That movement’s university is in Fairfield, the county seat and largest town in Jefferson County. In November 1992, Jefferson County has cast 22.8% of its vote [...]

[Editor’s Note: The writer of the article was incorrect when he implied that Joe Seehusen was responsible for the issues indicated below. I profoundly apologize to Mr. Seehusen for this inaccuracy, which happened under my watch. Actions are currently being taken to ensure that nothing of this sort happens again.—spg]

Should former Libertarian Party executive [...]

I’ll be at a political event tonight but I’m sure many of you will be discussing Iowa caucus results, so I thought this open thread might be helpful. Also, I’ll get the comments by e-mail on my cell phone, so I’ll have something to occupy my mind should the meeting be less than exciting [...]

Ballot Access News

New York upstate counties are governed by a partisan county legislature and a partisan county executive. In October 2007, one Orange County legislator, Michael Amo, switched his party registration from “Republican” to “Independence”.

The results of the November 2007 election for Orange County legislature were 10 Democrats, 10 Republicans, and Amo. Amo had been [...]

From Politics1.com, the latest results from the special election in Virginia’s 1st Congressional District:

As expected, State Delegate Rob Wittman® cruised to a landslide victory over Iraq War veteran Philip Forgit (D) in Tuesday’s special election. The vote: Wittman – 63%, Forgit – 35%, and Lucky Narain (Independent) – 2%. The seat is considered safely Republican. [...]

I work for the state’s largest yard sign printer, Michael Franks. He’s a Ron Paul Republican (he’s actually printing more 4×8s, 2×4s, etc. than any other print shop) and he personally put up the “Republicans For Smither” 4×8 yard signs last year in the chaotic CD-22* race south of Houston. Democrat Nick Lampson later won [...]

Libertarian candidates for city council in Fort Wayne, Indiana, are being credited/blamed for helping to defeat at least two incumbents. The Republicans feel that the Libertarians spoiled these races by drawing off traditionally GOP voters.

From Frost Illustrated…

Perhaps the number of candidate choices and the ideological differences candidates offered voters might be this year’s [...]

The Green Party has released its final tally of Green victories from Election Day, November 6, 2007.

It appears that 16 Green candidates, out of 94 who ran on November 6, won their races for local office (pending confirmation of David Lussier’s county legislature victory in New York). A total of 142 Greens ran for public [...]

The Reform Party is now a “semi-qualified” party in one of Pennsylvania’s largest counties. This news comes from Ballot Access News…

On November 7, the Reform Party nominee for Allegheny County Council-at-large, David Tessitor, polled 8.3% of the vote. Allegheny County contains Pittsburgh and is Pennsylvania’s second-most populous county. Tessitor had both a Democratic and [...]

Justin Holmes, who briefly obtained celebrity status for allegedly advocating the establishment of an armed militia at the State University of New York at New Paltz, ran for Town Justice in New Paltz, New York. He ran with the endorsement of the Libertarian Party of New York, but ran under the banner of [...]

Libertarian Arin Sime received about 8% of the vote in a 3-way State Senate contest in Virginia. Here is his concession email to supporters from earlier today…

I would like to thank all those who have helped this campaign. The results are in, and while they didn’t go our way, we can be very proud [...]

A good friend of mine, a Constitution Party member I attend school with, did the editing and producing of this video – it was footage shot with my Sony HandyCam, but the CP, you could say (spin) was instrumental in getting this out before the election results came in.