Posted at Green Party Watch by Walter Pituc. Reposted to IPR by Paulie.
Richard Carroll, G-North Little Rock, who is the sole Green Party member that is part of a state legislature, had his first authored bill pass in the Arkansas State House. It’s about electoral reform and increasing the petition gathering period for new parties and independents from 60 days to 90 days
I’m really glad that this is one of Representative Carroll’s priorities. I think it shows that he truly is a Green and recognizes that the system is stacked against new parties and independents. I look forward to more of his work!
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ first-ever Green Party legislator received House approval Friday for his first piece of legislation: A bill to extend the signature-gathering period for new parties and independent candidates seeking a spot on the state’s ballot.
The Senate did not meet Friday.
In an 84-13 vote, the House approved House Bill 1246 by Richard Carroll, G-North Little Rock. The bill would extend the period for new parties and independent candidates to circulate petitions in advance of a filing deadline from 60 to 90 days.
Source: Arkansas News

LOL…DailyKos “Silent majority”
I just took a look at the poll you attached to the DailyKos article, Ross. In answer to ‘what’s your opinion of the Green Party’, only 15% agreed with ‘I hate them’ – which one might think would be the most popular response, based on the firestorm of comments. 49% had a favorable response, including 29% agreeing with the most popular response, “they would be good if they got organized.”
Now, it’s not a huge sample, but that’s not a bad response from a crowd at a site that bans nice words about non-Democratic candidates. And a great reminder that trolls are actually outnumbered, despite their attempts to scare everyone else away from their favorite sites.
Yeah. Kind of like the people who don’t think Hitler killed millions of Jews, but wish he did (and wish to do so themselves).
“Nader “cost” Gore the election….
No matter how many different ways and times this has been proven completely wrong, no matter if you are in DC or Utah, petitioning for Greens or Libertarians or even the Constitution Party…”
I never could fathom the depth of intellectual dishonesty that it takes to believe that Gore won the election when it’s time to bash Bush and Bush won when it’s time to bash Nader.
Haha Milnes will need to add that to his campaign platform for 2012.
I like that song, though.
Woah. Searching for “Obama Zombies” comes up with some pretty far out stuff, LOL
I think Mr. Carroll has another bill pending too if I remember right from Ball0t Access News dealing with Ballot Access.
Interestingly, he ran while wondering if he could get more of the vote as a write-in Democrat or 3rd Party Green. After many told him the former, he went with the latter. Apparently, he sees himself as a Green-lite. But heck, with all this on ballot access I’d vote him in.
True, they aren’t ALL slow motion walking reambulated corpses triggered by Voodoo priests and the sound of Obama’s voice.
After all, I was a Demo til ’92.
But then there are these …
Nader “cost” Gore the election….
No matter how many different ways and times this has been proven completely wrong, no matter if you are in DC or Utah, petitioning for Greens or Libertarians or even the Constitution Party…
While there are some “war democrats” and zombies over there, there are a lot of good people and a lot of genuine progressives. Some third party, people, too. Libertarians, even, but they usually lurk in the shadows. There were a lot of people supporting me, too, and thankfully I got some genuine discussion about third parties and electoral reform out of it.
There was a comment that did a good job of explaining something about dailykos:
I can barely stand to go there during election season, though. Then 90% of the people are zombies.
I gotta’ hand to ya’, Ross. You know how to ruffle their feathers!!
But now that they are all pro war democrats, they deserve to have their feathers more than ruffled.
Typical is this comment:
“It doesn’t matter whether you do this for a living or whether this is just an interest of yours, you still can’t promote 3rd party candidates on this site. (which I found 3 TIMES before my eyes glazed over only half way down the comments)
And continued bleating about how Nader “cost” Gore the election….eight years ago! Gawd, these people need to get over themselves!
Implicit in their “arguments” is the fact that democrats are good, republicans bad. No reasoning, just repeated blather.
I wish I could have asked, (but it is against the DailyKos rules to criticize ANY democrat or any democrat policy, no matter how repugnant) “How can the war(s) be good just because a democrat is in the White House?”
Ross, I don’t know why you waste time over there. But my hat is off to ya’!!
PEACE
Ross Levin must be a saboteur. Next, Nightly Kos Vigilante Democrats (NKVD) will take Ross to Lubyanka for his show trial.
I like a lot of the people there. And it’s fun because there are so many people using it that it’s constantly updated. Unfortunately, though, there are definitely neo-Soviet zombies there.
Tell the neo-Soviet walking dead I said hello.
Oh man.
I read it for a few min.
Scary DP zombies.
It was like I was back in Soviet Russia, and only the name of the party had changed.
Bad memories, bro. I was traumatized by the mandatory Soviet child daycare.
Ugh.
Must drink vodka to wash away uncontrollable unease/anxiety.
Jesus! I wrote about this at and posted it at a few websites and look at the reaction at Dailykos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/2/7/191835/2136/997/694633
Interestingly (and tellingly), the poll doesn’t match up with the response in the comments because a few vocal and slightly nuts commenters went ballistic.
Thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eder
wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States
The highest-ranking Greens ever elected in the nation were John Eder, who was a member of the Maine House of Representatives until his defeat on November 7, 2006, Audie Bock, who was elected to the California State Assembly in 1999 but switched her registration to Independent seven months later[2] running as an independent in the 2000 election,[3] and Richard Carroll,
Those names are hyperlined in wikipedia, so you can check them out.
That’s great! What kind of bills have GP state legislators passed before (and who were they)? Does anyone remember off the top of their head?
It saddens me that thirteen people were supportive of a duopoly. But, good for him. The first step to a multiparty America.