• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Republicans try to limit voter choice

A

Anonymous

Guest
Republican Use Dirty Tricks, Crack Down on Ron Paul and Gary Johnson in State Courts


Douglas Goodman

The Republican Party is running scared. Either that or they think the country is better served by restricting voter choice to only those candidates they want to appear on the ballot. Could this be the same party that is supposed to totally support the Constitution and personal freedoms?

In Iowa, the Republican Secretary of State is attempting to remove Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson from the presidential ballot because leaving Johnson on the ballot “will cause “irreparable harm to other candidates and political parties who must compete against him.” In Virginia, Gary Johnson was successful in fighting a GOP attempt to remove him from the ballot.

In Oklahoma, the Republican Attorney General is attempting to remove Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party candidate for President from the ballot tying him to Americans Elect. Meanwhile, in Michigan, Johnson has to sue the Republican Secretary of State because she says he missed the filing deadline by three minutes.

In Pennsylvania, the state Republican Party is challenging validity of signatures even though more than double the required number were turned in. As for Ohio and Washington D.C, the GOP is suing to remove Libertarian Gary Johnson from the presidential ballot.

Washington State's turn-a-bout is fair play. The Libertarian Party is suing the GOP that is a minority party under state law, and therefore the party’s presidential candidate does not qualify for the ballot.

In Nevada, the GOP is worried about “None of the Above” because the state Republican Party “fears “none” could siphon votes from the Republican candidates.” “None of the Above” has appeared as a choice on all Nevada ballots since 1976 as a mean for Nevadans to express dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates. “None” cannot be declared the winner even if it receives the highest number of votes.

Why is the Republican Party doing this? Do they believe they fielded weak candidates who cannot stand on their own in close races? Do they not truly believe in freedom of choice and want to restrict, through any means necessary, voter choice? Have they forgotten what freedom really means? Or maybe they’ve gone off the deep end and don’t know how to get back on solid ground.
 

Steve

Well-known member
Why is the Republican Party doing this?

because Johnson is a self professed spoiler. . doing the same acts he is complaining about...


Washington State's turn-a-bout is fair play. The Libertarian Party is suing the GOP that is a minority party under state law, and therefore the party’s presidential candidate does not qualify for the ballot.
 

Tam

Well-known member
Oldtimer if you really cared about a fair election you would be asking why the Obama DOD is not making sure the soldiers get to exerise their rights to vote.

I heard today REPUBLICAN Congressmen are writing letters questioning why the DOD are not making sure the soldiers have access to voting. Seems the Pentagons excuses is People move and contact information is hard to keep up with.

These are Soldiers living on Bases in a War zones how hard is it for the DOD to make sure they get a ballot. :roll:
 

Mike

Well-known member
There's always two sides to every story. You might want to check the credentials of the author of OT's story.


Sept 6, 2012 HARRISBURG — After days of tedious signature scrutinizing in Philadelphia and Harrisburg, the race to get Libertarian Gary Johnson on Pennsylvania’s presidential ballot is coming down to the details.

The Pennsylvania Libertarian Party needs 20,601 valid signatures to secure Johnson’s ballot line. But is a signature valid on a petition if the address doesn’t match the state’s voter registry? And what constitutes a valid date?

A panel of three Commonwealth Court judges will answer these types of questions next week, and neither side show signs of backing down.

The Pennsylvania Republican Party first challenged the petition to get Johnson on the ballot. Now, after scores of volunteers from both parties have reviewed more than 49,000 signatures to determine their validity, around 15,000 are still in question and thousands of others were thrown out.

The Libertarian Party estimates it is around 4,000 signatures away from getting Johnson on the ballot.

Tom Stevens, president of the Pennsylvania Libertarian Party, said this vetting process is just one way to keep two-party control and calls for easier ballot access for all third parties.

“The process is the equivalent of dealing with a pit bull on steroids biting at my arm, my leg, my head, my hair,” Stevens said. “It’s a ridiculous process to have to go through just to get allow the voter an opportunity to vote for somebody.”

Adding insult to injury, should the party lose its challenge, it may have to pay the opposing side’s legal fees, he said.

To determine what signatures were valid, two volunteer reviewers, one from each party, cross-referenced the name of the person with the state’s voter registration cards. It could go one of three ways: The signature is valid, invalid or contested.

Stevens said in some cases, validity could come down to misreading one letter. It’s “extremely technical,” he said.

So far, both parties deemed around 16,000 signatures valid, said Paul Rossi, attorney for the Pennsylvania Libertarian Party.

Other issues such as addresses that differ from what are on the voter registry and incomplete dates will be left to the judges to address. Rossi said signatures falling into those categories total around 6,000 – meaning if the party’s defense on those points is successful, it’ll be enough to secure Johnson’s candidacy.

Rossi said he’s confident the party can win those arguments in court next week, based on federal law supremacy for address laws and when the petitions were printed.

“The date that the petition was redrafted is on the petition and was put on there by the Secretary of State,” Rossi said. “Everyone knows these are all 2012 signatures.”

But Ron Hicks, an attorney representing the Pennsylvania Republican Party, said the state statute is clear on what defines a valid signature on a petition. There must be a printed name, a signature, a house number, street name, city and a full date, including the year.

“The election code requires that certain people have a threshold, and we don’t believe they’ve met that threshold,” Hicks said.

Valerie Caras, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Republican Party, said duplicate signatures and those of dead voters were uncovered in the review process, along with signatures of people not registered to vote.

“Our view as a party is we continue to stand behind the objection to the petition based on the fact that there (are) just serious, serious problems with them, and it’s clear, blatant fraud in some cases,” she said.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
The real sad issue- is that the only bipartisan things the two major cults have been able to do jointly in the last many years is to toughen the laws for a 3rd Party or Independent candidate to get on the ballot...


•Founding Fathers did not anticipate or desire the existence of political parties, viewing them as "factions" dangerous to the public interest
•Founders' republican ideology called for subordination of narrow interests to the general welfare of the community
•Under republican ideology, politics was supposed to be rational and collaborative, not competitive
•But the first American political parties began to form while George Washington was still president


The Founding Fathers got this one wrong. They were pretty smart guys—they got the whole separation of powers and checks and balances things right—but they completely missed the boat on political parties. They were convinced that political parties (or factions, as they called them) would only destroy representative government and that there should be no place for parties in American democracy. But we have since become dependent on political parties. For the past two centuries, they have played a critical role in both the political and governing processes.

So why were the Founding Fathers, in this case, so far off the mark? And why exactly did parties prove so essential to our system of government?

The Founders were republicans. No, not George Bush or John McCain Republicans; they were philosophical republicans (with a small "r"). This meant they believed that successful representative governments required the subordination of individual personal interests to the welfare of the community. They believed that the political process was all about identifying the common good. It was not about competition and disagreement; politics was a process in which rational voters and officials calmly sorted out what best served the entire community. The end result was not one camp of winners and another of losers, but the entire electorate united behind a common vision.

As good republicans, the founders believed that parties (or factions) threatened this rational, collaborative process. If the political community broke into small groups committed to their own narrow interests, the search for the common good would be compromised. Politics would disintegrate into battles between conflicting visions, and elections would generate division rather than consensus.

But within a decade of the Constitution's ratification, political parties had emerged. Some of the Founding Fathers originally most concerned about these "factions" had actually helped to bring them about. George Washington lamented that political party wrangling "agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another."3 And Thomas Jefferson, always good for a pithy line, swore "if I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."4 But as president, Washington pursued economic and foreign policies that alienated a huge part of the electorate. And in 1793, Thomas Jefferson resigned his seat in Washington's cabinet to lead the opposition to the administration—a move that led directly to the formation of the first American political parties.

As the Founders discovered, to their dismay, the simple fact was that consensus was impossible to maintain. People simply disagreed about things. Reasonable people held conflicting visions of the common good. Politics was about conflict and division; and elections did produce winners and losers. And as politicians moved toward a more realistic understanding of politics, they discovered that some sort of political organization would facilitate—not destroy—the political process.


The other thing our founding fathers never foresaw was that our Federal government would be made up by professional politicians-- and that their vote would be available to the highest bidder...
 

Tam

Well-known member
I hope he didn't pull a Obama/Clinton trick and write voters in to get the required number needed to get on the ballot.
 

gmacbeef

Well-known member
Hey Oldtimer , Please explain to me then why you as a Democrat are not RAISING HOLY HELL about the BLATANT voter suppression at the convention when the yeas CLEARLY did NOT have a2/3 majority ,if they even had a majority. WE'RE All waiting.....................
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
gmacbeef said:
Hey Oldtimer , Please explain to me then why you as a Democrat are not RAISING HOLY HELL about the BLATANT voter suppression at the convention when the yeas CLEARLY did NOT have a2/3 majority ,if they even had a majority. WE'RE All waiting.....................

gmacbeef- its quite simple, I'm not a Democrat... I'm an Independent and believe it should be much easier for independent and third party candidates to get on the ballot if we want an election that really represents the country where there are as many or more independents that there are followers of either individual cult..
 

gmacbeef

Well-known member
So as an "independent" :roll: You support Oblamea & Continually Bash the Republicans ? Yeah, I wouldn't admit if I was a Democrat either. :wink:
 

Larrry

Well-known member
He thinks if he declares himself an Independent then he is one of those fair minded look at all things on its own merit kind of guy. It is only a ruse to hide his leftwing liberalism.
There is no way he can be considered anything other than a Leftwing liberal. His track record of actions and words verifies that.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
gmacbeef said:
So as an "independent" :roll: You support Oblamea & Continually Bash the Republicans ? Yeah, I wouldn't admit if I was a Democrat either. :wink:

Well you can believe whatever you want- but I've never followed a party...Always voted for the individual or the issue instead of the cult or what the cult said should be the way to vote... A couple times after a terrible Repub President (Nixon & GW) I have voted for D cult candidates... But mostly it has been for Repubs or 3rd party candidates (voted for Perot twice)...
I don't totally agree with all the issues of any party...
But on almost all issues there are two sides to the issue/story...
 

hopalong

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
gmacbeef said:
So as an "independent" :roll: You support Oblamea & Continually Bash the Republicans ? Yeah, I wouldn't admit if I was a Democrat either. :wink:

Well you can believe whatever you want- but I've never followed a party...Always voted for the individual or the issue instead of the cult or what the cult said should be the way to vote... A couple times after a terrible Repub President (Nixon & GW) I have voted for D cult candidates... But mostly it has been for Repubs or 3rd party candidates (voted for Perot twice)...
I don't totally agree with all the issues of any party...
But on almost all issues there are two sides to the issue/story...

We know all you juast wrote to be the truth because you said so?????You have lied so much it is difficult to know when you tell the truth!!which is seldom
 

gmacbeef

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
gmacbeef said:
So as an "independent" :roll: You support Oblamea & Continually Bash the Republicans ? Yeah, I wouldn't admit if I was a Democrat either. :wink:

Well you can believe whatever you want- but I've never followed a party...Always voted for the individual or the issue instead of the cult or what the cult said should be the way to vote... A couple times after a terrible Repub President (Nixon & GW) I have voted for D cult candidates... But mostly it has been for Repubs or 3rd party candidates (voted for Perot twice)...
I don't totally agree with all the issues of any party...
But on almost all issues there are two sides to the issue/story...

So you voted for Clinton twice, because voting for Perot was the same as a vote for Clinton..........& what could you possibly like about Oblamea, the most dishonest liar since Clinton ?
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
gmacbeef said:
Oldtimer said:
gmacbeef said:
So as an "independent" :roll: You support Oblamea & Continually Bash the Republicans ? Yeah, I wouldn't admit if I was a Democrat either. :wink:

Well you can believe whatever you want- but I've never followed a party...Always voted for the individual or the issue instead of the cult or what the cult said should be the way to vote... A couple times after a terrible Repub President (Nixon & GW) I have voted for D cult candidates... But mostly it has been for Repubs or 3rd party candidates (voted for Perot twice)...
I don't totally agree with all the issues of any party...
But on almost all issues there are two sides to the issue/story...

So you voted for Clinton twice, because voting for Perot was the same as a vote for Clinton..........& what could you possibly like about Oblamea, the most dishonest liar since Clinton ?


I'm glad OT voted for Clinton. Clinton was a pushover and did whatever the Repubs. said and that's why the economy was in such good shape, when Bush tookover.

Except for that recession he had to deal with, and the terrorist deal. :???:


Which of the 2 does OT blame on whom?
 
Top