2024 Third Party and Independent Candidate General discussion

[ReallySuper]

Massive victory in maintaining ballot access in California

In 2022, Peace & Freedom polled 3.1% for Treasurer, 2.3% for Insurance Commissioner, and 2.1% for Lieutenant Governor. But in 2018, it only had one candidate who polled over 2% for a statewide office: Treasurer 2.3%.

In 2022, the Green Party polled 3.5% for Controller, 2.7% for Attorney General, and 2.5% for Secretary of State. But in 2018, it only had one candidate who polled over 2% for a statewide office: Secretary of State 2.1%.

A grand revival, great to see these recent string of victories like the Green Party getting ballot access in North Carolina. Also glad to see that the left is .5% away from being the largest third party presence in California

It's almost like running a Left Unity slate of candidates for once instead of constantly competing against each other is mutually beneficial or something... who would've thought

[ReallySuper]

if at first you don't succeed at intimidating green party petition-signers to withdraw their signatures (montana 2020 flashbacks):

https://twitter.com/MatthewPHoh/status/1541456635704627201?cxt=HHwWgsC-_ZSpreQqA...


try, try again (WI, MI, PA flashbacks): https://ballot-access.org/2022/06/30/north-carolina-state-board-of-elections-refuses-to-certify-green-party-despite-counties-having-validated-signatures/


lol at the dems alleging "fraud". the real big lie

[ReallySuper]

It would be terrific if the P&F and Greens could nominate a joint presidential candidate in 2024. Howie Hawkins tried in 2020 but lost the primary with about 1/3rd of the vote to La Riva's 2/3rds. Hopefully the success of the Left Unity slate this year encourages them to go for it.

[ReallySuper]

Of course, there's also lots of write-ins that can't be properly attributed to any party, including 47,000 in the New York gubernatorial race alone where neither the Libertarians nor the Greens (Howie Hawkins) made the ballot after the Dems tripled the petition signature requirement.

[ReallySuper]

cornel west raised over $71,000 in his first month. thats more than twice what hawkins raised over the same period in 2019.

since he hasnt campaigned much yet (less than $2,800 in expenditures) he also still has almost all of that cash on hand. he should easily be on his way to earning matching funds, hopefully without all the trouble the fec gave jill and howie.

[ReallySuper]

love claudia from her work w/ the people's forum, codepink and lots of other leftist organizing. hate claudia for making me have to choose between her and cornel 

[ReallySuper]

also bc shes running as a dem this is the wrong thread for this anyway

[ReallySuper]

love claudia from her work w/ the people's forum, codepink and lots of other leftist organizing. hate claudia for making me have to choose between her and cornel 

well at least theres no competition between the two for my vote now

[ReallySuper]

The SPUSA will nominate a candidate next month according to SG, it is still unknown if the Greens are going to try and court their vote. Previously SPUSA was angry at Hawkins over not reforming the Greens to their liking, and with Hawkins and West out it will be seen what they and SAlt for that matter does.

The SPUSA is a weird party. I've been on Atlas for, what, ten years now, and every time they nominate a ticket it seems to come out of the blue. I've never heard of a Socialist Party candidate declaring their intent to run before the convention like Green or Libertarian candidates do.

Didn't Cindy Sheehan try and run on their ticket in 2016 but was rejected because she wasn't a dues-paying member?

The reason for this is because it’s probably chosen by a council running SPUSA while the Greens and Libertarian governing structure is—for detriment of both parties—influenced by the DNC and RNC as there are many former members of each.

It seems that SPUSA may have a strong line in not endorsing other candidates if they don’t have a relationship or prior membership. Hawkins and Sonia Johnson were probable dual paying members.

Cindy Sheehan’s Revolutionary Organization of Labor, of which she was a member for an indeterminate amount of time when organizing against the Iraq war, probably had no close relationship with SPUSA and their only prior endorsements are to the Greens in 2004 and Ralph Nader beforehand.

the spusa website says the national convention will select its nominees next weekend. the announced presidential candidates, based on their google form questionnaire responses, dont seem particularly... uh.. great. (although the person only running for vp sounds ok)

the convention schedule also implies that they will have a vote on whether to run a presidential campaign at all:

5:45 pm  Presidential campaign discussion
Vote on running a presidential campaign
 (if applicable)
Candidate statements and presentation
Voting
Adjourn

they would probably be better off not running anyone than running an unserious candidate who will only further discredit the dying party

[ReallySuper]

recognizing the shared humanity of people we happen to have political disagreements with is a bad thing, obviously. we should be actively dehumanizing anyone who disagrees with us.

[ReallySuper]

i was fully intending on voting for claudia de la cruz but the level of intense vitriol the democrats (still!) spew against jill stein is reason enough to support her

[ReallySuper]

this is the latest ballot access for the green party/jill stein. the yellow states' window for petitioning hasnt opened yet. oklahoma is the infamously difficult state requiring either 35k signatures or a $35k filing fee. jill is also slowly but surely on her way to matching funds (she needs $5,000 in small donations from 20 states; she has met that in 6 states already and the next 13 are all over $2,500)

https://twitter.com/DrJillStein/status/1756086568589148345

[ReallySuper]

the free & equal debate was supposed to have six candidates, but they expanded it to seven to include rfk jr, who got eighth in the public voting, behind peter sonski of the american solidarity party (who has not been invited)

[ReallySuper]

aside from the rfk jr distraction sideshow, in more important news jill stein has received enough donations to be eligible for federal primary matching funds and will file the application with the fec shortly. this means she will be getting an immediate infusion of $100,000 in public money soon, literally all of which will probably go to ballot access petitioning efforts lol. theyre already racking up huge expenses in the moderately difficult states, god knows how much they will have to burn on new york. the good news is at least greens are already on the ballot in other difficult states like texas, arizona, california, etc

also last week the scotus refused to hear jill steins case against the fec, which illegally and retroactively stole $100k from jill stein that it had previously given to her 2016 campaign in primary matching funds (the fec changed the definition of the primary season to shorten the time period in which donations can count for matching funds and then asked for their money back)

[ReallySuper]

What's up with Jasmine Sherman, the "Fat Socialist?" She's the only one running against Stein, she seems to have some amount of charisma or at least character to her, maybe if she upped her social media game she could get the Green youth vote? She made it to the F&E debate at least.

jasmine shermans volunteer signup form asks if you are over the age of 10, if you would be willing to "use your skills in the act of trolling" and to upload your passport to prove your identity. it is not a serious campaign (and this is just scratching the surface). jill stein won the green youth caucus primary with 80% of the vote to jasmines 13%

[ReallySuper]

rfk jrs campaign declined to debate jill stein on palestine (as expected). bc rfk gets (some) mainstream coverage and jill does not, skewering his campaign allowed jill to finally get on wapo

jill also finally got a c-span appearance, over five months into her campaign now (when cornel entered he got an interview almost immediately, and got another one just a few days ago. he's also had two separate campaign events on c-span, one 30 min and the other an hour and a half)

still no democracy now interview...

[ReallySuper]

https://twitter.com/guypbenson/status/1780984855490130150/photo/1

Well that is not ideal...

You have to work under the assumption that all the swing states RFK will make the ballot. (I'm not saying all states...I'm very dubious whether he can make Texas and California) RFK has the money and most swing states aren't THAT hard to get on if you have the money. (By contrast, I expect Jill Stein to fail to make NV, GA, and maybe AZ because she DOESN'T have the money)

The Natural Law Party was deciding between giving their access to him or to Cornel West. Unlike RFK, West will probably NOT be on the ballot almost anywhere. If Natural Law Party had given access to West, it'd be RFK AND West making it on in MI, rather than this way where it's only RFK.

Cornel West isn't really trying for ballot access petitions, so getting given access by minor parties is going to be his only way on ballots.

jill stein is already on the ballot in az and has collected more than the required number in nv (the deadline is june so the team can still get more sigs as a buffer). georgias threshold is 7,500 and the deadline is july so i dont see that being a problem for stein at all. although she is not rolling in the dough like rfk, she and the green party have an existing team of grassroots supporters/organization that has experience getting ballot access, so they need less money compared to rfks team who have no grassroots background and therefore can only operate by throwing obscene amounts of money at things. plus, jill stein has reached the donation requirement for primary matching funds and will be receiving a $100,000 check from the fec shortly. the real challenge for greens will be new york, indiana and possibly illinois (they will probably make it at least in illinois but all three will be expensive), i expect them to be on the ballot almost everywhere else without it being terribly difficult

ur right abt cornel west tho he is obviously not trying to petition (nor does he have the means to) so hes just grifting to get on various minor state party lines

[ReallySuper]

for those who havent seen it yet, jill stein, her campaign manager and her deputy campaign manager were arrested at the washington university gaza solidarity encampment in st. louis two nights ago. jill was charged with assaulting a police officer, so she was separated from the other arrested demonstrators and locked in a cell by herself for 5+ hours that night. the assault in question involved her getting violently repressed by a police officer twice her size using a bicycle to crush her into the crowd

[ReallySuper]

nyt has an article/maps of where third parties/independents are on the ballot. it only includes rfk jr, cornel west and the green party, excluding all other parties/candidates like the psl (who so far are on the ballot in utah, hawaiʻi, idaho and sc as well as having won the california p&f primary in march, although they won't officially nominate their candidate until august). it also misleadingly says that the greens have "failed to qualify" in new york and idaho, despite the fact that jill stein is on the ballot in idaho and is actively gathering signatures in new york (the deadline is not until the end of may)

[ReallySuper]

nyt has an article/maps of where third parties/independents are on the ballot. it only includes rfk jr, cornel west and the green party, excluding all other parties/candidates like the psl (who so far are on the ballot in utah, hawaiʻi, idaho and sc as well as having won the california p&f primary in march, although they won't officially nominate their candidate until august). it also misleadingly says that the greens have "failed to qualify" in new york and idaho, despite the fact that jill stein is on the ballot in idaho and is actively gathering signatures in new york (the deadline is not until the end of may)

Not sure about Idaho, but the article does go into specifics about the Greens in New York:

For example, the Green Party recently lost its ballot line in New York State because its candidate did not meet a strict new voter threshold — 2 percent of the total votes cast — in the 2020 presidential election. And so to get on the New York ballot this year, the Green Party must gather 45,000 signatures in a six-week window that closes at the end of May.

the article is correct abt new york but the map is (deliberately) misleadingly labeled as if the green party failed to get on the ballot for this cycle. bc they r still in the process of petitioning it should be labeled as such, in the same way that every other state where greens have ever lost automatic ballot access but are currently petitioning to get back on it for 2024 are labeled (so basically most of the other states). for idaho, it is labeled that way bc technically the "green party" is not on the ballot but jill stein is on as an independent. so the map is technically right but again misleading bc it doesnt say that rfk or cornel west "arent on the ballot" as independents where they have been nominated by a state third party, so it makes no sense to portray the greens as "not on the ballot" when the reverse is true (the party's nominee is on as an independent rather than on a state party line)

[ReallySuper]

Am I crazy or is there an outside chance for this guy to appeal to dejected and disaffected college kids off the back of his whole "gay, anti-war, pro-immigration" thing?

between jill stein, cornel west and claudia de la cruz, the "dejected and disaffected college kid" demographic has plenty of better options than a right wing guy who thinks the department of education should be abolished and wants to end federal financial aid programs

[ReallySuper]

psl were pursuing ballot access in 23 states as of last month. the one state that got dumped is kentucky... smh

[ReallySuper]

Anti-democratic New York strikes again and rejects choice for the voters. Democrats must be overjoyed.

Not Democrats fault that those candidates get the required amount of signatures.

Kind of imagine you cannot be older than 25. In the context of New York and Democrats and ballot access law or recent changes to it your statement is pretty ignorant. Maybe just now you've heard of a man named Andrew Cuomo and the vendettas he held.

What does that have anything to do with anything? There was a threshold, they did not meet it. They knew what the threshold was. If there was an appetite for their candidacy, they would've made it.

the threshold just a few years ago was 15,000 in only six weeks (already one of the worst in the country). when the demonrats got a trifecta in albany under andrew cuomo they quietly passed a 2020 covid budget that tripled the requirement to 45,000 signatures without increasing the amount of time you can petition. with how aggressively demonrat lawyers scrutinize and throw out signatures, realistically you need almost twice that amount to be safe. this is a literally impossible hurdle unless you have a billionaire running mate and corporate pacs funding ur ballot access (i.e. how rfk jr. got on by spending literally a million dollars just for ny ballot access). despite all of the obstacles, jill steins grassroots campaign managed to get 42,000 signatures without a single penny from corporate donors, more than ten times what any other grassroots campaign got, so clearly there is a huge appetite for her candidacy