↓ Archives ↓

Posts Tagged → Ballot petition

Pitfalls and pratfalls of primary elections for candidates and volunteers alike

While digging through old stuff in my office recently, I encountered a bag in a corner with a bunch of campaign tee shirts made for volunteers who had helped me run in the 2010 primary race for congress here in central PA. Seeing the pinned-on names on each shirt, I felt embarrassed that somehow I had neglected to get these tokens of appreciation into the hands of those dedicated volunteers. They had donated their time to me, to a campaign they believed in, and it is absolutely incumbent upon all candidates to express appreciation, and show it if they can, to their volunteers, win or lose. Here was evidence that I had failed to do that fully with these several people whose names appeared on the tee shirts, and it made me feel badly.

Fast forward fourteen years, and I have just learned by doing an internet search that a political candidate I had contributed real time and effort to had dropped out of the race last Thursday. This person and I had exchanged many emails and texts for the past month, I had drafted a press release for her, and gotten her about forty ballot petition signatures to help get her on the April 23 ballot. Despite all my time and effort on her behalf, I did not qualify for the email the media says she sent to her supporters, announcing her bowing out of the race. I felt like all my time and effort dedicated to this person was not appreciated or valued, which makes one feel badly.

Dear political candidates, you have to express your appreciation to your volunteers! Volunteers are how every campaign runs, whether it succeeds or fails, and showing your appreciation to the people who make up the campaign is your duty to those people who take time away from their families, their businesses, jobs, etc to help you get ahead. Failing to express appreciation hurts not just your own reputation, but it also leaves your volunteers wondering if they should ever volunteer on a campaign again for anyone else.

I have seen other candidates cold-drop their volunteers when the campaign ends, and even drop their campaign staff. This is usually due to the exhaustion a candidate feels at the end of the race. Campaigns are all brutal exercises, all-out sprints over a relatively short amount of time, and at their end usually everyone involved is feeling tapped out and emotionally drained. It is tough to sustain that high energy after the race ends, but again, dear candidates, you absolutely owe it to your volunteers to say Thank You. An email, some text messages, some cards to the people who put in the most work and hours. Tee shirts if you made them.

What took out this latest candidate I was helping was Pennsylvania’s archaic ballot petition process. Depending upon the office sought (state house, dog catcher, US senate, congress etc) candidates for office in Pennsylvania are required to collect hundreds or even thousands of registered voter signatures on complicated forms where the slightest mistake, mis-spelling, or poorly written word can result in a disqualification. There is an entire arcane process surrounding the screening, challenging, and defending of the ballot petition signatures. The only people who benefit from this are the attorneys who specialize in this arcana, and the two main political parties.

If enough of the candidate’s ballot signatures get disqualified, then the candidate does not achieve the minimal threshold of signatures, and does not qualify to be on the ballot. A lot of hard work and volunteer hours can get flushed down the drain if insufficient signatures are obtained to keep the candidate on the ballot.

PA’s complicated ballot petition process is designed by and for the political parties, which have the experienced volunteers, lawyers, and updated voter lists necessary to get far more signatures than are needed. It is designed to keep political outsiders out of office, and political insiders in.

According to this now un-candidate’s statement in the news article, the attorney who challenged her ballot petition signatures had also threatened to bury her campaign in a pile of legal costs if she tried to fight her way through all the nit-picky challenges. All indications are that US Senate candidate David McCormick is behind this challenge and threat. This is really about a billionaire bully booting pesky candidates out of his way on his path to self-serving elected office.

Yuck.

Pennsylvania voters want choice, and we do not benefit from the current ballot petition process, which was once described to me by a Dauphin County Republican Committee Woman as a necessary precaution to prevent “unqualified people” from running for office.

Said I, “Why don’t we just let anyone run who wants to run? Shouldn’t all citizens have a right to run, aren’t we all qualified?  Isn’t that the heart and soul of the democratic process, to keep it as open and accessible to The People as possible?

Said she, “That sounds like too much democracy to me.

And so we see yet another victim of this ridiculous gatekeeper process, which both political parties can agree must be kept intact so they can retain maximum control of who gets to run, and who does not. It is really about control, not democracy.

Yuck.

These are some of the pitfalls of running for political office here in Pennsylvania, and while some are unavoidable, it is best to work hard to avoid the pratfalls: Campaign volunteers and supporters will always appreciate and fondly remember a kind word, a nice email or text message saying thanks. And also will they remember that their hard work went unnoticed and unremarked in the end, and so they will feel used.

Double yuck.

 

Kathy Barnette campaign files over 10,000* signatures!

The campaign for Kathy Barnette for US Senate has filed over 10,000* ballot petition signatures from registered Republican voters in Pennsylvania, well beyond any other candidate.

*UPDATE March 21st, 2022: Final ballot petition signature count for Kathy Barnette’s campaign is over 12,000! HOLY COW! This is serious grass roots support!

Pennsylvania requires 2,000 ballot petition signatures to qualify for a place on the ballot as an official candidate for US Senate.  Although a candidate’s campaign may file the requisite number of signatures, there is a small but serious cottage industry in disqualifying both voter signatures off of ballot petitions, and in DQing entire ballot petitions altogether. So, having a large (in Barnette’s case it’s huge) buffer of extra signatures and petitions means that opponent candidates will have a much harder job knocking a candidate off the ballot altogether. In this case I believe it is impossible for Barnette to be knocked off the ballot, because her signature margin is so large.

What an enormous indication this is of Barnette’s grass roots popularity. While her campaign may not yet have the zillionaire funding of Bartos or McCormick, Barnette does have the support of the voters. And if there is a lesson that establishment candidates have been taught more and more since 2008, it is that the voters don’t care about fancy campaigns or flashy candidates with impossible promises. What the voters want more than anything is a real candidate, an authentic American, which Kathy Barnette is.

Candidates Dave McCormick, Carla Sands, and Dr. Oz all recently “moved” to Pennsylvania to run for this senate seat. Only Kathy Barnette and Jeff Bartos are actually from Pennsylvania, and of these two only Barnette is a conservative working person. Bartos is a flashy RINO…yuck.

It is quite clear that Barnette is the voter favorite. Her polling is already ahead of Bartos and Sands, even though Barnette is starting fresh with no name recognition. Barnette’s public support is only going to grow.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing for the other candidates to set aside their egos and their big financial dreams, drop out of this race, and start supporting Kathy Barnette now, so that she is in her best possible position to win when the November election arrives? Why are they putting us all through this charade? Kathy Barnette already has this primary race won!

Kathy Barnette, honest to goodness all-American candidate for US Senate

What is in a political “party”?

The Communist Party.

The Democrat Party.

The Republican Party.

What is the difference between these three and many other active political parties?

Their party agenda is what defines them.

Their cause, their unifying principles, their policies and political platforms, these are the things that separate political parties from one another.

All political parties have their own structure, their functionaries, their own bureaucracies, lawyers, and bosses.  All have become self-interested organisms, influenced by a constellation of special interest groups.  At a certain point, the party exists simply for its own benefit.

But what happens when these parties begin to bleed into one another, when they begin to blend across their boundaries and blur their boundaries?  When they lose their distinctive appeal?

When political parties lose their way, do they lose their reason for being?

Although my own Republican Party has pledged overall to serve the taxpayers, plenty of fellow Republicans hold personal and official positions contrary to the interests of taxpayers, voters, and citizens.  Their positions are subtle, often only visible in the important background decisions they make.

Many times in recent history, the Republican Party has been used as a weapon to silence voices of political activists who sought to return the brand to its more basic principles and its more elementary purpose, which would naturally be defined as the cause of liberty.

It is my own hope and the hope of many other dedicated citizens that the Republican Party, also known as the establishment, will stay out of any upcoming elections around Central Pennsylvania.

It is one thing for a candidate to ask, say, State Rep. Ron Marsico for his individual support, or to ask individual party committee members for their support.  It is entirely another thing for the Dauphin County Republican Committee to endorse a candidate so that the Pennsylvania Republican Party can spend money to challenge a Republican candidate’s nomination ballots, because he (or she) is too independent-minded.  Or too “conservative.”  Or not enough in the pocket of some party boss.

My experience tells me that this controlling, anti-freedom behavior has happened so often that many political activists are inclined to become political Independents, which means that the Republican base, the most passionate Republican voters, become driven away from the party and become less interested in its success.  We saw this with the past election, where former governor Tom Corbett had little street game.  The people with the most passion were not going to do door-to-door for Corbett.

Even more worrisome is if the one-time Republican becomes an Independent candidate, or mounts a write-in campaign.  Sure, these efforts may hurt the Republican Party’s nominee, but if the party didn’t want that independent-minded candidate in the first place, what right does anyone have to expect him to stay loyal to them?

Put another way, if some political boss doesn’t want a certain candidate to get elected, then what expectation does that political boss have of earning the support of the candidate he opposed?

Put another way, if you don’t want John to get elected, then why would John want you or your ally to get elected?

Do the Democrats have this problem?  Sure.  But that political party has become overrun with foreign policy extremism and anti-capitalism.  Wealth redistribution is completely contrary to American founding principles, but it is nevertheless now a core of the Democrat Party.

That is sad, because at one time, the Democrats just wanted more opportunity for everyone.  Now they want to take from one person and give to another person, which is theft.

But I am not a Democrat, so this is not my political problem.

My problem is with so-called Republicans who actually share a lot in common with liberal Democrats, but who stay in the Republican Party.

There are different ways a Republican can share values with a liberal.  For example, a Republican staffer who believes in the supremacy of  bureaucracy….despite bureaucracy being the enemy of freedom and individual liberty.  Working from within the party, these functionaries stamp their own flavor on policy and principle alike, often softening edges and blurring lines, giving the voters fewer choices, more government intervention, and ultimately less liberty.

The same could be said for certain “Republican” lobbyists, whose connections to money, political funding, cause them to promote bad policies such as Common Core, which strikes deep at the heart of liberty.  They would rather ally with liberals than support a conservative Republican candidate.  People like this have great influence in the Republican Party.  They influence its agenda, and the kind of decisions the apparatus supports.

If you stand for everything, you stand for nothing.  I myself will stand for liberty, freedom, and opportunity for everyone.  If that puts me and others like me at odds with some political party, then that says everything a voter needs to know about that party: It does not have your interests at heart.

I am a Republican because I hold old-fashioned, traditional American values, the kind of values that created America and kept her great for so long.  I will vote for and support only those candidates who hold similar values.  Regardless of what a party spokeswoman may say, a Republican Party that has no conservativism in it isn’t really a Republican Party any longer, is it?