As of this morning, http://www.lp.org/okla is at $6,199.52 towards a goal of $10,000 to be raised online. Along with money raised on the phone and matching donations that will make it $60,000, with less than $4,000 remaining to be raised to get the LP Oklahoma ballot access drive started. I’m not sure whether that means Bill Redpath’s snail mail letter will still go out or not, but either way you can read it here. There’s a blurb about why the LP is prioritizing this project at http://www.lp.org/okla as well.
Previously at IPR:
Libertarian Party: Help us match $30k pledge for ballot access
Opposition News Article on Cooperative Ballot Access Efforts in Oklahoma and South Dakota
Libertarians and Greens announce joint petition drive in Oklahoma (note: the fundraising is separate, and I don’t know what if anything the Greens have raised for the drive; volunteers are working both petitions, but I don’t know how many signatures they are getting or whether Greens will pay or not).
Oklahoma Governor Signs Ballot Access Bill
Oklahoma kept all alt party and independent candidates off the ballot for the last three presidential elections – the longest such streak in any state since Ohio in the 1950s and 60s, and Ohio’s law ended up being thrown out by the courts as unconstitutional.
Disclosure: I plan to work on the Oklahoma LP petition drive, worked on it the last time we succeeded (2000), and am on the LP national ballot access committee along with Richard Winger, Bill Redpath, Gary Johnson of TX and LNC alternate Ed Marsh of TN.
Agreed w/ Andy
“Circular Firing Squad
August 10, 2015 at 2:42 am
Get on the ballot! Then, get 2% of the vote! Then, get knocked off the ballot! Then get on the ballot! Rinse and repeat! …But don’t ever push to get anyone elected to State Legislature; run for offices that are totally and completely beyond your capacity to even measure how you lost.”
While I agree that the Libertarian Party ought to do things more intelligently, and I also agree that there ought to be a focus put on electing people to seats in state legislatures (which I believe could be done by targeting specific districts with manpower (canvassing, etc…) and donations), there are still good reasons for Libertarians to run for high level offices as well.
Libertarians currently stand close to zero chance at being elected to the offices of President, Governor, or US Senate, but there are still good reasons to run for these offices, because these are the offices to which the highest percent of the public pays attention, so these are the campaigns which we can use to spread the Libertarian message to the most people and to bring in the most new people to the party and movement. There are also states where getting a certain percent of the vote for these offices (usually President or Governor) can win us ballot access for the next election, and in a few of these states, for the next two elections.
The petition drive in Oklahoma is going to be for the full party status petition, which will mean that it will qualify our Presidential ticket for the ballot, and it will also allow Libertarians in Oklahoma to run a slate of candidates, and all of the candidates will have the Libertarian Party label next to their names.
I’d love to see a Libertarian in Oklahoma have a serious game plan to get elected to a seat in the state legislature. Regardless of whether this happens or not, there are still good reasons to do the petition drive.
The donation form on that page doesn’t seem to be working. Its telling me to try again later. So, I guess I’l try again later.
The letter is in the mail. Mail house letters take 3-4 weeks to actually hit and in this case myself and many other members of the LNC have been soliciting donations to the Oklahoma ballot access fund well in advance of the letter going out.
My hope is that after the mail fundraising starts to come in, we will meet and exceed the goal for Oklahoma and get started on other states this year as well.
CFS’s new screen name is most appropriate, in regards to the individual posting the comment. Wish I had patience to explain yet again why the first pararaph is profoundly in error and off target in its sarcasm regarding optimal strategy.
Meanwhile back at the ranch…as I posted in the open thread last night,
See http://www.lp.org/okla and if you can please make a donation while you are there. Regardless of whether you are in a position to donate or deem this worthy or not you can use the page to track the progress on raising the last 10k of the 60k that has to be raised for Oklahoma.
At this time Raised: $6,509.52 Goal: $10,000.00
The page also explains:
Given that it has taken so much longer to send it than Redpath assumed when he wrote the following, and less than 15k remains to be raised, I don?t know if this letter will actually be mailed as planned ? (I am guessing not?) but it?s a good letter, I think he does a great job of explaining it here? I will not cut and paste the text because as you can see above with my quotes from LFA, the spacing issues when cutting and pasting from a pdf, but I hope everyone reads this:
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2015-07-HO-Okla-letter-v1c.pdf
And then goes back to http://www.lp.org/okla and do whatever you can. If it helps anyone please consider it a personal favor to me, but even if you don?t like me or couldn?t care either way if I have a job or not there are many other reasons to do this and other petitioners who will be working there so you don?t have to consider it a personal favor to me if that?s a demotivator for you.
Get on the ballot! Then, get 2% of the vote! Then, get knocked off the ballot! Then get on the ballot! Rinse and repeat! …But don’t ever push to get anyone elected to State Legislature; run for offices that are totally and completely beyond your capacity to even measure how you lost. Make sure they’re so big you can’t even do an exit poll to see if the vote is rigged. Make sure you’re outspent 10 to 1, and that your enemy has the ability to outspend you 100 to 1, if it looks like he’s losing, the week before the election. …Don’t do polling. Don’t get anything extra from your petitioners. (Something you can’t do anyway, if you’re hiring unprincipled mercenaries over LP activists.) Just keep jerking off! It’s only the future of our country. It’s only libertarians’ lives. What do those things matter?
It’s quite possible that, if current big-L Libertarians fail to end prohibition, future generations will blame them for their willful ineptitude, and they’ll be as despised as the prohibitionists themselves. Who knows how vengeful the imprisoned of the future will be? There’s no need for an artilect war, when simple now-existing prohibitionist bigotry (against innovation and self-modification) will do just fine. In the USSA, we don’t even allow people to temporarily modify their own thoughts! (This makes it likely that the first superhuman cyborgs will be born into a black market, or overseas.)
Let’s hope James Halperin is right in his famous prediction of a future where prohibition becomes untenable, and the state decides not to “double down”.
Of course, most big-L libertarians aren’t even aware this is coming. In that regard, they’re like the serviles in the mainstream D and R parties, soon to be irrelevant relics.