The Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania - Forum

I started this thread as an area where everyone can post questions regarding the nomination papers.

David Jahn

I couldn't tell from either our or the state's posted instructions whether the sides are supposed to be of the same, or opposite orientation (book style, or "flip-top" style).  The past few years, they've been the latter.

Anyone?

And, does the state care, one way or the other?

--Harold Kyriazi

We have concluded that it doesn't matter.  Consider the following:

• The state has made blank forms available on line.
• The state has not addressed the orientation in their printing instructions.
• The first year the state made the forms available online was 2006 when the forms were flawed.  That year, they stated the orientation didn't matter.
• From a legal perspective, the documents are complete with signatures and the circulater's affidavit. 
• Once the state accepts them, it would be up to the court to determine whether or not the petitions are valid. That would only happen if someone were to present a legal challenge.
• I have read a lot of case law in recent months regarding ballot access challenges and appeared in commonwealth court for two cases.  Based upon the court's stated commitment of honoring the will of the electors in numerous cases, I cannot see a court granting a challenge based upon orientation alone.

Having said all of that, I will confirm that the state will accept the papers without concern for the orientation.

Thanks for asking.

David Jahn

P.S. I realize we have come a long way from the days when making copies of petitions was taboo.

Howdy all!  I joined the board specifically to answer questions about this process.  One thing I'd love to know is how far away you have to stay away from the polls when petitioning at Tuesday's primary voting locations.

Here's the text of an email I just wrote which should be going to the Pennsylvania portion of the national party's email list to encourage folks to petition on Tuesday April 22nd.  Please feel free to forward it far and wide.  Thanks! ....

Primary Day in Pennsylvania is fast approaching.  With your help, it can be a day we can take a major step forward as a party – not so much because of who is on the primary ballot, but because of who we can put on the ballot in November.

We need as many Pennsylvania residents as possible to go to the polls this Tuesday, April 22nd, to petition for our candidates to get on the general election ballot.  Please take as much time as you can on Tuesday, grab a clipboard and some pens and ask these voters to help us give them a Libertarian choice in Pennsylvania in November!

You can download the nomination papers and find all the information you need to fill them out at http://www.lppa.org/2008_Nomination_Papers.html.  (“Nomination papers” is the official state term for petitions in Pennsylvania.)  That petition will not only place our Presidential ticket on the ballot, it also includes your Libertarian candidates for Attorney General, Auditor General and State Treasurer.

There’s no better place to find registered voters who are in the mood to sign your petition than a polling place on election day!  Every signature you can collect as a volunteer does accomplishes much more than simply helping Libertarian candidates get on the general election ballot.  We need to collect 24,666 valid signatures from Pennsylvania registered voters to succeed.  That’s a tall order which requires the help of professional petitioners who have to be paid.  Every signature you get as a volunteer saves the party up to $2 each, which can be used to finish the petitioning efforts in Pennsylvania and all across the country.

Please go to http://www.lppa.org/2008_Nomination_Papers.html today and follow the instructions to download and print the petition.  Feel free to contact me directly by email at sean.haugh@lp.org or by phone at 202-288-9853 if you have any questions.  I’m also happy to help you find a notary and someone with the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania to whom you can turn in the signatures you collect.

There will be many more opportunities for you to circulate the nomination papers up until we have to complete the drive in late July.  But there’s no better chance to get valid signatures than at the polls on Tuesday.  Every single signature helps!  With your efforts, we’ll be able to get back on the ballot in Pennsylvania and give everyone a Libertarian alternative in November.  Thanks!

yours in liberty –
Sean Haugh
Political Director

You must stay at least 10 feet away from the door of the polling place to collect signatures on Primary day. We may want to mention that place of residence means physical address, not mailing address (absolutely no P.O. Boxes), and that people should sign as they just signed at the poll (I think it is better to catch people coming out of the poll rather than going in).

Also, printed forms must be legal size (8.5"x14") and double sided. All information on the signature line must be in the hand of the signer. Dates may be in numbers,  but must be complete with the year.

Mik Robertson

We can actually start working on gathering signatures already?  And we have thru August 1st to turn in the papers, correct? 

Do we have a longer period since this is a presidential election year?  I collected signatures in '03 to be Inspector of Elections (I won with like 13 votes), but we had only 6 weeks to do the petitions.

Thanks from Luzerne County!

Maybe you got a late start.  We are able to start circulating as son as the major parties turn theirs in.  As I recall, that was sometime around February 14th this year.  We have a large window, but we also have a lot of signatures required to run any statewide candidates.

Are you still a judge of elections?

David Jahn

Well, I was an Inspector of Elections for Wilkes Barre 1-1, but not only did I move, but Luzerne County also did a major consolidation of the precincts and went from about 350 down to 189.  I am planning on getting the 3rd party packet for Inspector next year for my current precinct, Hanover Twp, Ward 7.

Also, even tho I did switch my registration to Republican so I could vote for Dr. No (RP) in the primary, I sent in a new registration to go back to Libertarian today.

New question.

On the nomination papers, the president/VP slots are listed as Rochelle Etzel and Chuck Boust.  Can they remain on the nomination papers as 'place holders', or should Barr/Root be in those slots?

I don't want to see the entire page tossed out because we had wrong names in the nomination slots.

Thanks!

Brain,

Thanks for asking.  We need to continue collecting signatures under Rochelle and Chuck Boust names.  Once we get enough to qualify them on the ballot, we'll submit the nominations papers in their names.  Then they will withdraw and we'll substitute their names with the actual candidates.  I know it sounds weird, but that is the way we have to do it in Pa.

Thanks

David Jahn

When or if I get a copy of the nomination paper, is there any restriction on who can sign it, assuming age 18 or older. If a Democrat will sign thinking he is putting the screws to Mc Cain by supporting our being on the Ballot, should I get their signature or refuse?

Regards,
Samantha

I think the only qualifications to being a valid signature is that the person is over 18, a resident of the county listed at the top of the nomination form, they sign the same name listed with the county elections bureau (using middle initial, Jr/Sr, etc) and have the correct address, again as listed with the elections bureau (no abbreviations).  We don't want the signatures challenged like Nader was in 2004, right?   :P

When I filed for Inspector of Elections for my precinct in 2005, I was telling everyone to spell out "Wilkes Barre" and not use the standard local abbreviation of "W-B", since these could be challenged and thrown out.  I used the voter registration files from Luzerne County (bought it on a CD for like $4) as my guide to who was registered at what houses, and to make sure their signature was correct.

I'd suggest making sure they sign in cursive after reading about Obama's past tactics of challenging every single signature that was not signed completely in cursive with the cities spelled out.  I helped another candidate get signatures this year and it was a bit tough, but found that if you phrase it as allowing for more choices on the ballot and be very firm about the signature just as voicing an option to allow voters to decide if they want to allow people to have the ability to choose and additional candidate is not requiring the signee to vote for the candidate.

With a Libertarian Candidate listed for the U.S. House 3rd District,  Randall Forester,  but there is no place where I see the address information to fill in the right side of the petition.  What do we do with the address block for Randall or the other "fill in the blank" candidates???

And only registered voters can sign.

The candidates name, address and occupation must be the same for every petition.  This is listed on the front page, just below the President and Statewide Candidates.  If you do not know exactly what to put here, contact the candidate or the state chair, Mik Robertson.  Let me know if you need his contact information.  weneedjohngalt9@yahoo.com

Hi, I'm new to the LP and would like to help collect signatures for ballot access.  What are the necessary qualifications for someone to do so?  Section E of the nomination papers make it look like the collector must be "commissioned".

Also, item number 3 under "Printing Instructions" on the papers download page suggests that there should be instructions included with the nomination papers.  The file, however, has only the two pages for the nomination form itself.  Did I miss something?

If you are registered to vote in Pennsylvania, you are qualified to circulate nomination papers.  Where it says "my commission expires___" in left half of Section E is the area for the notary public to fill in their notary information.


Oops! you are correct and I'm surprised no one has brought that up prior to now.  The state actually provided the instructions on a sheet separate from the nomination papers this year.  I uploaded the instructions and corrected the web page to include a link to the state provided instruction document (http://www.lppa.org/documents/election/2008/2008_pb_nomination_paper_instructions.pdf).

Thanks for the help.  Every little bit counts.  Even if it is only a half dozen signatures.  All those sheets with a few signatures can add up to a successful signatures drive and assure we attain ballot access.  We have a couple people who will gather 1,000 or more all by themselves.  I wish I had that kind of time to commit.  Please let us know how you make out. 

Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

Thanks

David Jahn

Thanks for the response David.

New questions:

1. By when should I submit my signatures to the party?

2. Should I number all of my pages (if I have more than one) or are they numbered after they're all collected by the party?

Jonson

Jonson

Excellent questions!

1. We will probably post information regarding turn in procedures soon.  We'll likely want them turned in around the middle of July to allow us time to review and organize the papers.

2. The party will number the pages.  When we recieve all of the papers from across the state, we will number them and organize them before presenting them to the state.

Thanks for the questions and the help.

David Jahn

I just printed the forms and will be bringing them to our Ron Paul meetup meeting tomorrow (I don't have far to go, we're meeting in my restaurant! lol) but I wanted to ask if any thought has been given to collecting a lot of signatures the way the Ron Paul group did - that is, let people come to us.

I know we did that several times, a few times at my place while it was closed, once at a Barnes and Noble, and another couple of times a Pizza shop owned by one of our guys, and we got hundreds of sigs that way. Now we did have quite an extensive email list to notify (about 600 emails in Lehigh and Northampton) about the signature events, but we should have some emails shouldn't we?

We aren't set up to broadcast to each county at this time, but that is something we could possibly make happen. We have some emails, but not nearly that many.

You are making me realize that we should recommend to those who became active in the Ron Paul movement that they should sign up on the forums and/or mailing list of like minded groups like the Libertarian Party so they can keep abreast of the efforts of others with similar goals.

David Jahn

A former Libertarian now green has suggested to me that we do a combined meeting. They sign our ballot and we sign theirs. Thoughts?

Samantha

Samantha

The law says you can only sign one ballot.  Most likely the signatures involved for both parties would be disqualified if they were challenged. The Democrats have challenged the Greens more than once.  If Barr gets any traction, the Republicans are likely to come after us.  The bottom line is that I see no benefit to doing having a signing party with greens.

David Jahn

A former L now G?   That's a first.  Do you have any insight of the switch?  Sounds like someone is confused.

I can't really fathom helping the Green Party.  They're very close to the old Reds.  Greens have a true hatred for the free market in general.

Just to update everyone, it looks like we have about 50,000 signatures in hand at the moment and still have volunteers turning in papers. If everyone could get their signatures wrapped up, papers notarized and send them no later than Saturday, July 19 to:

Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania
3915 Union Deposit Road, Box #223
Harrisburg, PA 17109

that would be ideal. I believe there may be a couple of late-entry district candidates that are still looking for signatures, so please let me know if anyone needs extra help at this point.

Thank You to all who contributed to making this one of the best nomination paper drives ever! It does not look like the number of signatures will be a problem for us, even if there is a challenge. Please send in every paper you have, as the more we turn in the better it will be!

To put this in some perspective, the Green Party has just called off their nomination paper drive as they only have about 7,000 signatures with little hope of reaching the required 24,666. It remains to be seen if Ralph Nader will be on the ballot, but I believe his crew will be able to get him enough signatures.

Mik Robertson

Does the 24,666 number mean that the LP gets some kind of status that allows them to then field as many candidates as they want for any offices in PA for this election year? Or does that just get people on the ballot for Treasurer, Auditor, Attorney General, Governor, etc (true statewide offices)?

btw, I'm a PA native, moving back to PA next spring and would love LOVE to work with other LPers on fielding a full state of candidates in 2010. I know it's early to act, but it's never too early to talk about it. I know it's a huge job, but I'm committed.

The 24,666 number means we get our statewide candidates on the ballot this year, and that is all. If any statewide candidate gets more than 2% of the vote in November, then we get what is called "Minor Party" status. That means our candidates will have to file different forms when they go to get a similar (or perhaps much larger) number of signatures in the 2010 election. It also means the Libertarian Party gets a box on the voter registration forms that people can check to register as a Libertarian voter, rather than having to check the "other" box and write in Libertarian.

Under current election law, our status will not change significantly until there are 15% of the registered voters registered as Libertarian (right now it is about 0.5%). At that point we would be forced to participate in the primary election system, which we are currently precluded from. Hopefully the election laws in PA will change to not only make ballot access more uniform, but remove the compulsion to have taxpayer funded nominations.

Mik Robertson
 

wow I don't like those rules at all. do you think this would be an improvement?

http://www.ballot-access.org/2008/07/02/important-pennsylvania-ballot-access-bill/

As long as the filing fees are the same for everyone and they are not made so high that only those belonging to political parties will have the money to get on the ballot.

I just checked out the Pennsylvania Dept of State website, and on the unofficial list of candidates, it looks like we have the full slate of people on the ballot for statewide races: Pres, Att'y Gen, Aud. Gen. and Treas., along with 5 other races (US House: PA-5, PA Senate: 21 and PA House: 35, 63 and 180).

Does this mean we've satisfied the signature requirements, and just have to survive any challenges from Rs and Ds?  I hope so!!

That is correct. We have submitted about 51,345 signatures and the challenge period expires Friday, August 8. There are still some substitutions to make and those should be done hopefully by August 15 although the deadline is August 21.

There is also one of our candidates who was not listed on the BCEL webpage, although the election office folks say they received his paperwork an he is on the ballot and that is Vance Mays for State Rep in the 64th District.

Mik Robertson