Minor Party and Independent General Election Discussion

[StateBoiler]

On the previous PSL drama, looks like it’s at a close. No new allegations are coming out and the main leadership has been tight-lipped on responding. Whether they will do any reforms or not is unknown to me or most of the online left-space.

The Peace and Freedom party has responded by not responding publicly. No new Twitter activity since the 18th of December, and all the focus on a local race in California. The odd part of this is that this is mentioned on two online spaces, their main site and the PSL Twitter page. Looks like for local stuff, the PSL is still worth collaborating with.

2024 is still a mystery though. Even though Hawkins lost the party primary when he tried, he still got a quarter of the vote. He most definitely will try again, along with the PSL and newcomers from the People’s Party. This vote seems like it could get much more competitive.
Oh yeah, Hawkins beated out Jorgensen in Guam by a slim margin.

It's more the Peace & Freedom Party to pay attention to. It's their ballot line.

The issue with any Green Party candidate winning it is there's already a Green Party ballot line in California, so if the Peace & Freedom endorse their candidate, they lose their own identity for that election. And California's Top Two system ensures they can't hang their hat on any other election.

The Green Party candidate could just run on the P&F ballot line then. I don’t see the big deal in doing so.

Well if the Peace & Freedom Party are just going to endorse the Green candidate, it leads to the obvious question of its members in California of "why does the Peace & Freedom Party exist if we're going to co-nominate the Green, should we just become Green Party members?" Obviously the California Green Party would be in favor.

I think Hawkins had a good idea trying to "fuse" the left of Democrat vote this past election. It just did not work however.

Considering that they did the same thing with the Black Panthers, citizens party, the movement around Ralph Nader, and now with the PSL; the party knows what it can do to keep going. Again, given that at least a quarter of P&F members voted for Hawkins, it’s not like they would have not let him get it after the primary or else he wouldn’t have been placed there. That party’s membership had the chance to leave the party for so many different organizations over the years, but they didn’t.

Also Hawkins did get most of the Trot and #Bernorbust Left, so I mean that in itself takes serious work.

His practical fusion in the end amounted to only the Socialist Party, which was a few hundred votes at most based on Mimi Soltysik's performance in 2016 (most of Soltysik's vote was on the Michigan Natural Law Party ballot line, which went with Rocky De La Fuente this year) and he got the Socialist nomination a year early by giving them the VP slot. Meanwhile Dario Hunter and Mark Charles that were prior Green Party nomination opponents splintered. Only 8500 votes there but splinters are never good especially when your goal is aiming for a Unified Left. And for all this unifying the left, their ballot access compared to 2016 was poor. Yes, Democrats worked hard against them and in 1 case went outside the law to expel them from the ballot (Montana). The Republicans and Democrats are people that will prioritize them achieving power above everything else including the law, they should know this and respond accordingly.

[StateBoiler]

BAN:

Congressmember John Sarbanes (D-Maryland) has introduced HR 1, “For the People Act of 2021”. It alters many federal election laws. It makes it more difficult for a presidential candidate seeking the nomination of a party to receive primary season matching funds. Current law requires private contributions of $5,000 from each of twenty states. The bill increases that to $25,000 from each of twenty states. Thanks to Mike Feinstein for this news.

Minor party presidential candidates have frequently qualified for primary season matching funds, and have been permitted by the Federal Election Commission to use such funds on ballot access drives. Minor party presidential candidates who received such funds were from these parties: Citizens, New Alliance, Green, Reform, Natural Law, and Libertarian (in 2012).

The change is in section 5202 of the bill. Scroll down about three-fourths of the way.

[StateBoiler]

Not sure what to make of this:

https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2021/01/movement-for-a-peoples-party-caught-using-forcethevote-to-undermine-the-squad/

[StateBoiler]

The national Green Party have decertified the Alaska Green Party affiliate for nominating Jesse Ventura as its presidential nominee. (The former Alaska party has shown it's willing to go independently.) The Rhode Island Green Party voluntarily left the national Green Party after being threatened with decertification (did not nominate the national Green Party ticket, and kinda sorta endorsed Joe Biden). There's an issue with the Georgia Green Party that some people in the Green Party are trying to decertify them as well, pushed by the Green-created "Lavender Caucus".

https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2021/01/ri-ak-green-parties-gone-from-national-gp-is-ga-next/

Next in the gunsights of some national Greens could be the Georgia party, but for entirely different reasons. Last spring, at its state convention, the Georgia GP adopted a statement of women’s sex worker rights that some trans activists think is anti-trans. Defenders of the state party worry that Rhode Island and Alaska, whether the actions were deserved or not, are being used as dominoes. 2020 presidential nominee Howie Hawkins said last year that, at that time, he opposed de-accreditation, but he also opposed the party’s platform plank.

Language and semantics issues lay behind this. Gender-critical radical feminists stress that “gender” and “sex” are not the same thing, as well as stating that the party’s platform and the individual plank are not anti-trans.

...

Unfortunately, from this perspective, the national party, on state membership requirements, talks about “gender balance” rather than “sex balance” and that could be construed in various ways. Beyond that, the state party, if a majority claims the plank is biased, be found in violation of point II.10.

My personal guess is there is a 1-in-3 chance the Georgia party faces some sort of disciplinary vote by the end of this year or earlier. If proposal 1031 linked above passes, it is possible that, should it face action, that action is less than de-accreditation.

Will that, even, be controversial enough to cause fracturing in the party?