From Richard Winger at Ballot Access News:
On December 9, the Maine Secretary of State said the Libertarian Party is not a qualified party. The law says a new party can qualify by having at least 5,000 registered members by December 1 of the odd year before the election. The Libertarian Party submitted approximately 6,400 registration cards, but election officials only processed 4,489 by December 1. There are enough unprocessed registration cards to put the party over the 5,000 requirement, but the Secretary of State says they don’t count because they haven’t yet been processed.
It is extremely likely that the December 1 deadline is unconstitutionally early. Courts have struck down early petition or registration deadlines for a group to qualify for party status in Alabama (April was too early), Arkansas (January was too early), California (January was too early), Idaho (May was too early), Nebraska (February was too early), Nevada (April was too early), New Mexico (April was too early), Ohio (November of the year before the election was too early), South Dakota (February was too early), and Tennessee (April was too early). All of those were procedures to qualify a party, not procedures for candidates.
In addition, deadlines for procedures for candidates to qualify for the general election ballot were struck down in many other states, including Maine. A US District Court invalidated Maine’s non-presidential independent candidate petition deadline of April in Stoddard v Quinn, in 1984.
The earliest deadline for a new party to qualify that was upheld was the Alabama March deadline, but the reason it was upheld was that Alabama had its primary for all office in March. In the past, when Alabama had a June primary for all office, the April petition deadline was held unconstitutional. The Maine primary is June 14, 2016.
Dastardly!
If Scott stuck to the fundraising and didn’t dip into petition (or in this case registration) drive management there would be no problem. He fundraised for Arkansas in 2011 and when he tried to tell Rodger Paxton not to hire us Rodger told him to stick to the fundraising and let him (Rodger) manage the petitioners. Scott did not like it but everything worked out well.
Very interesting “dirty laundry” session. Entertaining and informative.
Actually, I’m one of the first people Bill calls when there’s work available. Maybe not so much anymore as my health issues are making me a lot less effective as a petitioner. Andy is one of the first people Bill calls too, indirectly. Bill just prefers not to deal with him directly, but Andy gets the work anyway and Bill knows about it. Since Bill knows I usually ride around with and get paid through Andy, when he calls me he pretty much knows Andy will be there.
Scott prefers not to deal with us, but that’s mostly because he’s not happy that we didn’t keep quiet about him ripping us off in 2006. Due to that we would prefer not to deal with him either, and that long standing dispute has worked to the detriment of LP drives that may have otherwise succeeded, such as Oklahoma in 2012 and this registration drive in Maine. I hope the Maine drive still succeeds through the intervention of the courts against state fuckery.
Andy, you don’t seem to understand that I would like to see you and Paulie and the other libertarians work on all of those LP petition drives. The problem is you keep shooting yourself in the foot. I — and others — have repeatedly told you how to conduct yourself and market yourself so you will get every contract. Instead you drive people away and they don’t want to hire you. Then you lash out at everyone who gives you sound advice instead of looking inward, changing your approach, and reaping the success that would bring.
You can shoot the messenger all you want, but that isn’t going to have any effect on the outcome. You can scream at the wind all you want, but that isn’t going to have any effect on the outcome. The outcome depends entirely on your choices.
Since you’re obviously awake but not answering your phone, off topic: did you look at ACH transfer? It may not be as hard as you think.
“Some of the worst petitioners I’ve come across were “libertarians” who spent more time whining than working all while enjoying a sense of entitlement due to their political beliefs.”
How many petition circulators have you come across? What experience do you have in ballot access other than the FAILED effort that you mismanaged to put Bob Barr on the ballot in West Virginia in 2008.
Here is what a person who has a lot of experience in ballot access had to say:
Al Anders in a comment on Ballot Access News said:
http://ballot-access.org/2010/04/30/veteran-libertarian-petitioner-collects-510-illinois-signatures-in-one-day/
“As for whom I consider the best petitioners for the LP, my ranking is as follows.
1 Andy Jacobs, has Scotty’s tenacity, and Darryl Bonner volume. Plus he does an excellent job articulating the LP philosophy and will often pass out LP literature at his own expense.
2 Scott Kohlhaas, reliable, and a good articulator of our philosophy as well.
3 Gary Fincher, a very strong producer, with great validity, also does a first rate job explaining our philosophy and frequently provides literature at his own expense. Main drawback, has bad luck with thugs with badges.
4 Darryl Bonner, my only knock with Darryl is that he will sell the LP expediently by articulating an issue or two but not, to my knowledge, the underlying philosophy. He is however a workhorse who is extremely dependable.”
LOOK WHO IS RANKED NUMBER 1 ON THIS LIST.
Al is not some guy who said this without having any experience in ballot access. Al worked on ballot access drives on and off for 30 years (I think he dropped out of it a few years ago though).
Oh, and the article was about Dondero collecting 510 signatures in one day in Illinois. I recently collected 520 signatures in one day in Oklahoma, which is a more difficult state to do this in than Illinois, because in Illinois you don’t have to separate the county pages, unlike Oklahoma, and in Illinois, about 65% of the population is registered to vote, compared to only 50% in Oklahoma.
I also had a day in Maine where I gathered 600 signatures in one day.
I also did 450 in one day in North Dakota, and it was on a day where it rained part of the day.
I also once gathered 400 signatures in one day in Pennsylvania, and I did this in only 4 hours, which means I averaged 100 signers an hour for 4 hours.
Also, unlike some people, I don’t misrepresent petitions to the public, as in I don’t lie to people to get them to sign.
I also always make an effort to get good validity, which is why I almost always have good validity. Anyone can have their validity rate go down if they are in a bad location (like last year I worked a beer festival, and my validity went down at that event, but I brought it back up the next day). Unlike some people, I have NEVER had a pattern of bad validity.
Here is a review of my work from a person in the LP who actually worked with me:
Jim March of the Arizona Libertarian Party who personally saw me work at 2 gun shows in Tucson.
“Re: Andy Jacobs’ great work @ gun showSaturday, March 7, 2009 6:28 PM
From: This sender is DomainKeys verified”Jim March” Add sender to ContactsTo: deuchner@, thatpetitionguyCc: [email protected] contains attachmentslibertarian registration sheet.pdf (444KB)
Andy absolutely kicks ass at this.
I watched him take at least 20+ of these and I can tell you this is a
very high-grade pile – existing voters who are already politically
aware. I would be surprised if the failure rate crosses 20% and I
suspect it will be much less…this is a grade-A primo stack of paper.
Let me make a suggestion here: if it’s OK with him, I’d say pay him
up-front for at least 2/3rds of these, and then when we get the
“success rate feedback” forms from Pima’s Recorder, we then settle up
accounts for any more. Upshot is, he won’t have to wait until the
Recorder finishes for most of the money, BUT he’ll still in the end
only be paid for those that are successful.
I gave him eight sheets worth of the “voter name turn-in sheet” forms
I developed for the Pima recorder’s office, and am also giving him the
.PDF of the form and a dozen more such sheets tomorrow AM. Since I’m
CCing him here I’ll include that as an attachment. (Note that it can
be printed in B&W and still work.)
I’m also doing him a one-page flyer on “Election Observation and the
Pima LP”, I’m drafting it now.
Look, this guy is SO much better at this than me it ain’t even funny.
By far the most effective thing I can do is just make sure Andy is
able to operate full-tilt, helping handle logistics, housing,
documents, etc. If he needed me to walk his dang dog I’d do that :).
This ONE guy just working the gun shows can net us all the
registrations we need both Pima and *statewide*. It’s like watching
Michaelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel :). Or more seriously, the
dude could give the “Shamwow” guy on TV a run for his money :D.
Jim”
Here is another review, from the same drive:
“your latest batch of regsThursday, April 23, 2009 8:37 AM
From: “deuchner@” Add sender to Contacts To: thatpetitionguy@Cc: 1.jim.march@The Recorder’s office notified me yesterday that your latest batch of regs had been completed. 57 out of 61 were good. Of the other four, two did not provide proof of citizenship, one gave a business address & wrong tel #, and one was out of county. Still, 57 out of 61 is remarkable!
How shall I get a check to you for $342.00, are you in town now or shall I mail it? Also, will you be at the gun show the weekend of May 2-3?
Thanks again
Dave”
The two comments above are from an LP voter registration drive. Now just imagine if I had gone up to Maine to work on the LP registration drive when I offered to go in back around May or June.
Do you think that the LP would be ballot qualified in Maine right now if I had worked on that drive? Do you think that the party would have a higher percentage of HARD registrations (that is people who actually have a clue as to what the Libertarian Party is about, and might actually vote for our candidates, and might actual engage in actual Libertarian activism) if I had been there, and if the drive had been run in the manner I have suggested that it should have been?
Andy wrote:
I’d love to see more field activism. I’d love to see more actual libertarians doing petitioning rather than mercenaries. In order for that to happen, we need to find petitioners who are cheap, reliable, and drama free — AND are libertarian AND are willing to do field activism (not OR… AND).
Where are those people? It ain’t you. If you want to be in that category, first you need to cut out all the drama. The people hiring petitioners are never going to value “libertarian” or “field activism” over “drama free”. Never. Not ever. No matter how much you whine about it. Never in your life will that happen. NEVER. NEVER!! I don’t know how I can make that any clearer. (This is not a normative statement, it is a positive statement: a statement of fact.)
Andy wrote:
The people who hire are looking for petitioners who are cheap, reliable, and drama free. PERIOD.
We’ve been over this before. You keep arguing that they should hire petitioners who are libertarians or who represent the party well. That’s interesting and might be nice, but it’s not what they’re looking for. Ceteris paribus they’d prefer libertarians, but ceteris is not paribus.
Then you argue that the libertarian petitioners are cheaper, more reliable, and have less drama than mercenary petitioners anyway. Great! If that’s true, then why do you spend so much time bitching that they should hire libertarians and not hire mercenaries? All you would have to do to get every single petitioning contract is stop talking about things they don’t care about and point out that you are the most qualified based on the things they do care about: cheap, reliable, and drama free. That’s not rocket science… it’s common sense.
So who don’t you do it? The obvious answer is you are actually not cheap, reliable, and drama free. In fact, you’re a huge drama queen. I’ll grant that you’re a lot more reliable than mercenary petitioners. So when people actively avoid hiring you, that’s a bright red flag that not only are you far from drama free, but your drama is so annoying and time draining to those doing the hiring that they are willing to hire far, far less reliable people to avoid that drama. Res ipsa loquitur.
When I walk into a job interview, I try my best to highlight how I satisfy the job qualifications listed in the position description and would effectively carry out the job requirements listed in the position description. I don’t ramble on about how big my magic card collection is or how fast I can run a mile or how many hamburgers I can eat in 10 minutes or a million other things that the company doesn’t give a fuck about. And I sure as shit don’t scream at the company that their job description is all wrong, and they should be hiring whoever has the biggest magic card collection regardless of the job qualifications or day to day requirements. You’re like a broken friggin’ record too autistic to realize how to interact with normal people and market yourself.
See Shane’s advice above… it’s spot on.
Funny how Chuck and Shane pop up with a bunch of (baseless) personal attacks, yet they avoid my overall point about increasing Libertarian field activism.
I want to put more actual LIBERTARIANS out in the field talking to the public during petition and voter registration drives. I am not just talking about the existing Libertarians who have done this work, I want recruit new Libertarians to do this work. I don’t just want people who get signatures from the public, I want FIELD RECRUITERS/AMBASSADORS.
I’d like to see teams of actual LIBERTARIANS on the ground in every state plus DC on a regular basis, either working on petition drives, voter registration drives, doing “get out the vote” canvassing, or spreading jury nullification information to the public.
Frankly, I think that it is pretty pathetic that the Libertarian Party operates the way that it does now and is in the shape that it is in now. The potential for this party is much greater than where it is at right now.
I am not involved in this stuff because I like to lose. I am in it to win it, and if we are to lose, well, I’m not going down without a fight.
Shane wrote:
Exactly.
“Shane
December 11, 2015 at 01:41
Andy doesn’t seem to realize that when you hire contractors, having them be sane and easy to work with is pretty high up on the list of attributes you look for.”
Well Shane does not seem to know this, but I am one of the top people to work with in the petition business, LP or otherwise. I am perfectly sane and have a reputation from those in the know as one of the best, which is why I work regularly. I have had campaigns fly me across the county, pay for rental cars and motels for me, and even pay for meals for me on some occasions. I was a top ballot access consultant for a major presidential campaign in Ron Paul for President. Yes, that’s right, I played a big role in getting Ron Paul on the ballot in several states in 2008 and in 2012. I even played a big role in getting some Ron Paul delegates elected (How many people in the LP have ever played a role in getting anyone elected to anything? Not many.).
I also just did some ballot access consulting for a major presidential candidate just last week. They were having problems getting on the ballot in a state. I told them what they needed to do. Unlike some people in the LP, they actually FOLLOWED my advice, and it is working for them. They did not dick around for weeks or months like some people in the LP do. I gave them advice, they took it immediately, and it is working out for them. This is a major party candidate, not “little league” like the Libertarian Party.
I sometimes have petition proponents or coordinators call me up and BEG me to work on their projects.
If I was a “bad guy” or “difficult to work with” or “insane” or “not doing a good job” or whatever other negative and baseless accusation you want to throw my way, I would not be able to work regularly, and I would not have such a stellar reputation.
Not only do I work regularly, but I actually TURN DOWN a lot of work offers.
I have worked in 32 states plus DC over the last 15 1/2 years. Some places I have worked multiple times, and been hired back (or more accurately, contracted with again) on multiple occasions.
I have been the top, or among the top, producers on numerous petition drives, and I have also been the top, or one of the top, when it comes to having a high validity rate.
Oh, and unlike some people in the LP, no ballot access drive that I ever played a big role in has failed to make the ballot.
How does Shane know how “easy to work with” these people in Maine were? I have worked on ballot initiatives in Maine. Have you ever worked there? Do you even know one person who worked there?
It’s funny, because when I was in Oklahoma recently (I left there for more lucrative work) the LP state party official in charge of the job actually commented how I had the highest validity rate of anyone else who worked there during that time period, and also how much easier I was to work with compared to the pain in the butt that Redpath’s favorite mercenary was (complained a lot, needed to get paid frequently, had a low validity rate on the signatures they collected, etc…).
How many petition offices has Shane been in across this nation? How many signatures has Shane personally collected?
Have you ever been inside a petition office in one of the big initiative states, like California, Washington, Colorado, or Florida?
The Libertarian Party seems to have a bunch of arm chair and keyboard warriors who act like they know more than they really do.
“It was decided in an insider deal with Scott Kohlhaas that they would give a monopoly on the job to a mercenary coordinator. This was done without even consulting with anyone else, or discussing price.”
Just to clarify, it was decided by Scott Kohlhaas (who is in Alaska), that a monopoly on the job would be handed to one mercenary coordinator, and that only this one person could get paid from the LP of ME, and that this one individual would be able to decide how much to pay anyone who worked on the registration drive, and how much money from the LP of Maine they were going to pocket.
Once again, nobody else was consulted with about this. Nobody was interviewed. No bids were taken. The party did not save any money. The party squandered money if anything.
This was not free market, and it was also politically stupid.
Perhaps Chuck Moulton thinks that it is a good idea to have the party represented on the streets by welfare statists and alcoholics and other non-libertarian street hustlers, and he thinks that this is “saving money,” yet he never provides any evidence to back this up, and in fact all of the evidence says the exact opposite, as this approach has resulted in multiple failed ballot access drives, almost failed drives that had to be rescued at great expense to the party, as well as a Libertarian Party that has been stagnating or shrinking for years, and which has not elected anyone to a significant office (like a seat in a state legislature) in over 15 years.
How about this? The next time you are in a state where the LP is doing a petition or voter registration drive, head down to the nearest homeless shelter to recruit your crew of petition or voter registration workers. They will probably work cheap. I don’t think that they will do a good job, but by golly, I bet you could get them to work cheap. Maybe you could pay them in cheap boos and cheap cigarettes.
Andy doesn’t seem to realize that when you hire contractors, having them be sane and easy to work with is pretty high up on the list of attributes you look for.
And not many people I know of give work to contractors who continually bitch, moan and bash the same folks from whom they expect work.
Ideology has nothing to do with performance. You’re either good at what you do or you suck at it.
Some of the best petitioners I’ve come across were apolitical with lots of personal issues that prevented them from holding normal jobs.
Some of the worst petitioners I’ve come across were “libertarians” who spent more time whining than working all while enjoying a sense of entitlement due to their political beliefs.
Back to the real issue, the state is delaying the process for registrations in order to keep the party off the ballot. That’s politics. Government officials don’t face any consequence for these types of actions — if anything they’re rewarded within their political circles.
Go to the courts and get it resolved.
Chuck Moulton does not know about what he is talking about here.
First off, Redpath had nothing to do with the LP drive in Maine.
Second of all, there was no bidding. Nobody offered to do the job for any price. Nobody was even talked to about the job. Nobody was interviewed.
How can you say that somebody offered to do a job for a cheaper price when nobody was asked?
It was decided in an insider deal witb Scott Kohlhaas that they would give a monopoly on the job to a mercenary coordinator. This was done without even consulting with anyone else, or discussing price.
Insider monopoly deals with no bids and not even interviewing or consulting with anyone else is crony capitalism.
They really did not save the party any money. If anything, they have caused the party to lose money, because the party paid out tens of thousands of dollars for mostly soft registrations, and they do not even have ballot access to show for it, and now the party will have to spend money on a law suit, or will have to spend money on a petition drive to put the presidential ticket on the ballot, which would not be necessary if the registration drive had been done properly.
Bullshit! They knew what the deadline was before they started. This thing could have easily been finished 2 or 3 months before the deadline.
Also, a big issue here is how many of the registrations are soft registrations and how many are hard registrations? I bet most of them are soft.
I do not agree with what the state is doing with the deadline, but even so, this registration drive could have been finished a while ago. Hell, I offered to go to Maine to work on this back in May and June.
Andy wrote:
What?!! That’s the exact opposite of crony capitalism.
Crony capitalism:
First of all, there is no “government official” in this context. However, let’s suppose for the sake of argument that Bill Redpath (or the Maine LP chair or whoever selects petitioners & pays for the petition drive) were a “government official”. You want Redpath to select you because he’s your buddy and you’re both Libertarians — even though you charge more than the competition. That would be crony capitalism. Instead, Redpath picks whoever will do it the cheapest. That is the opposite of crony capitalism.
It’s a screw job from the state pure and simple, stop trying to make it about something else.
That is not really an example of a free market. What they did was engage in monopoly contracting, which is of an example of crony capitalism, and the fact that they did this with people who are not even Libertarian activists is just poor political strategy.
Hopefully the legal challenge will prevail.
Andy, as you have mentioned several thousand times: you are a Libertarian. So, one would assume you are a free market person as well. The LP of Maine picked their petitioners and lost. The donors knew or didn’t know. That disclosure is up to the LP of Maine. If the LP National got involved, then that makes it a centralized plan.
Let the market do its job. Stop blaming your competition.
The real losers are the people of Maine. That is all that matters.
I agree with Richard Winger about the deadline, but even so, this does not invalidate anything that I said here.
#1), The job in Maine could have been finished months ago. I offered to go there over the summer, as did three other Libertarians. If they had brought me in back when I first inquired about it, I probably could have finished the entire job myself before the deadline, and if myself, and say one to four other Libertarians had been there, you could take it to the bank that the job would have been completed well in advance of the deadline.
#2) There are what is known as soft registrations and hard registrations. A soft registration is a person who has little or no knowledge about, or commitment to, the party banner under which they are registered. A hard registration is a person who actually understands what the party is, is likely to vote for that party’s candidates, and who may engage in activism for that party. It takes more work to get hard registrations than soft registrations, and given that this drive was worked on by an all non-libertarian mercenary crew, I’d be willing to bet that a higher percentage of the registrations gathered are soft registrations than hard registrations than would be the case if actual Libertarians had worked on the registration drive.
Sounds to me like Richard Winger is right about the deadline being too early and a lawsuit against the deadline having a good chance.
It says that the problem was with the slow processing of the completed registration applications. What does that have to do with the personal political views of the registration gatherers?
Oh, and I bet that a high percentage of the registrations they collected are soft registrations rather than hard registrations, as in soft “supporters” rather than hard supporters.
This is what happens when you hire non-libertarian mercenaries instead of having actual Libertarians to work on a petition or voter registration drive. I know 6 or 7 actual Libertarians, myself included, who were willing to go to Maine to work on this, and we all got denied the opportunity to work, in favor of a non-libertarian mercenary crew. I know one Libertarian who called an LP of Maine official to inquire about the job, and he left a voice mail, but never received the courtesy of a return phone call.
So now the LP of Maine still has no ballot access, after spending 10’s of thousands of dollars in LP donor money, and this means that thousands more dollars in donor money will have to be spent next year to petition to place the LP presidential ticket on the ballot, and that more money will have to be spent on petition drives in Maine to put other LP candidates on the ballot, which means that they are not likely to have other candidates besides the presidential ticket, and this assumes that the party won’t screw up getting the presidential ticket on the Maine ballot as it did in 2008.
I almost hate to say it, but see, I told you so.
Never send an an all non-libertarian mercenary crew to do a job that should be done by actual Libertarians.