The Green Party of Pennsylvania made their official nominations last weekend for Governor, PA-12 and State Senate District 20.
At the top of their ticket is Paul Glover for governor, a social entrepreneur from Ithaca.
Glover is founder of more than a dozen organizations and campaigns, including Ithaca HOURS local currency, the Philadelphia Orchard Project, and Citizen Planners of Los Angeles. He is author of six books on community economic development, and taught urban studies at Temple University. In 1978 he walked 400 miles across Pennsylvania, from the Delaware Water Gap to its southwest corner.
In a speech to convention-goers, Glover said “I have agreed to stand as the Green Party’s candidate for governor of Pennsylvania so that voters have the opportunity to select a governor who would ban fracking; shift subsidies from nuclear to solar, and from roadbuilding to rail, and from prisons to public schools.”
Glover declared that he would “create 500,000 green collar jobs, promote progressive taxation, clamp down on commercial bank excesses, legalize marijuana and free its prisoners, protect forests and small farms.”
Getting on the ballot as a third party candidate in Pennsylvania is an uphill battle.
Republican and Democratic candidates only need 1,000 or 2,000 signatures to get their candidates on the statewide ballot, Glover’s campaign would need about 16,639 signatures.
The higher requirement comes from a state law that requires third party candidates obtain a number of signatures that is equal to 2 percent of the total votes received by the most popular candidate for statewide office in the previous general election. This is because third parties don’t have primaries in Pennsylvania.
Glover isn’t the only third-party candidate trying to get on the ballot in 2014, Libertarian Ken Krawchuck announced his intent to run for governor last month.
The higher threshold of signatures will also pertain to the Green Party’s other nominations including Tom Prigg from McCandless to run against Rep. Keith Rothfus in the race for U.S. House of Representatives, 12th District.
Prigg is a former 82nd Airborne paratrooper and neuroscientist, recently turned journalist to report stories on our government and the economy.
“It was the frustration of only observing and reporting that incited me on to run for Congress,” said Prigg. “I couldn’t sit back anymore and wait for someone else to come up with a plan for the future.”
Jay Sweeney, from Falls Township, Wyoming County and current Green Party chairman, will attempt to run in the 20th Senatorial District of the General Assembly, represented by Lisa Baker since 2007.
“We’re very excited about the upcoming campaign season,” said Sweeney. “We are pleased to offer a choice of candidates who are opposed to the direction the Commonwealth and the Country are taking. We are especially proud to offer candidates who oppose the hydrofracking process and the industrialization of our forests with which voters are increasingly expressing their displeasure.”
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8 Responses
You gotta vote your conscience! I detest Corbett and his policies. I’m pretty sure Wolf will be our next governor but I’m voting Green because the Dems are simply simply green enough.
Thank you for Green Party story.
The Green Party has a list of strong Green candidates. The Green Party is right! Vote Green Party!
DemPA-
“in relation to their worth” ?
Are they less worthy? Progressive 3rd party candidate care about everything on your list and make far better arguments in advocating for them than regular Dem candidates
“worrying and fretting about a candidate or candidates that will ultimately receive 2% of the vote?”
You claim to care about marriage rights for gay people getting married? Well, they are only around 2% of the population.
I’m sorry – but I just don’t care.
Far larger issues are out there – like getting rid of Corbett and that is not gonna happen spending time worrying and fretting about a candidate or candidates that will ultimately receive 2% of the vote?
I care more about Medicaid expansion, at least taxing the frackers, employment and marriage rights, choice, public education and a thousand other things.
Third party candidates suck up so much oxygen in relation to their worth.
Sorry
Robbie-
There may be only 11,002 voters in PA registered as Green Party, however, there are over 800,000 with no party affiliation, and another 69,000 with other affiliations.
So, we have about 880,000 registered voters who don’t want to be in either the Dem or Rep parties (nearly 12.5% of registered voters).
Yet any non-Dem/Rep candidate is required to get many times the number of voters to show “support”.
2,000 voters represents 0.0568% of the Dem voters (1 out of 1,756)
But, the 16,639 signatures represents over 150% of the total Green party registration.
WHY don’t the Dems need to show their candidates have support by getting 1% or 2% of their party’s voters?
1) Part of the reason for the lack of “track record” is not being allowed on the track. And even when they do manage to get on the ballot, they aren’t allowed in debates.
2) The Dems and Reps make up 88% of the registered voters and have huge party infrastructures to help circulate petitions. Both sides routinely abuses this by having notaries sign the collected petitions, without the circulators present (since the judges are all in on it, since that’s how they got elected too).
3) A lot of signature collection is done at party conventions and committee meetings that are scheduled during those weeks. (All the petitions I’ve signed so far this year were at such events.)
But, the winter weather is not that big a factor as there are so many people to gather the signatures that each one only needs to gather a few from nearby neighbors.
SO, the answer to your question is YES. “it really is that hard to get the threshold number from any registered voters if you have even modest support.”
Also, who claimed that the “Progressive Summit was indicative of the 2014 Democratic primary”? The Progressive Summit is indicative of where progressive values are and the direction they’d like candidates to head or causes that need championing.
All the leading candidates support the progressive values of marriage equality, freedom of choice for women’s health, unions/fair-pay for workers, funding education, and equal pay for women, to name a few.
For the straw poll voters at the summit, Hanger was the most progressive. However McCord and Wolf had plenty of support as well. They are progressives. It’s just that Hanger was the standout candidate for progressive values.
The larger point is that Corbett is going to be out and the next Governor is going to be a Democrat and a progressive.
A Green party candidate or an unaffiliated Independent candidate have every right to be on the ballot and advocate their positions, without unreasonable signature requirements.
Third-party candidates (Libertarian, Green, etc.) must satisfy a higher signature requirement for at least 3 reasons:
1) third-parties do not have a track record of performance and must demonstrate adequate support to earn a place on the ballot (a proven track records will earn the party an easier way to get on the ballot)
2) the threshold may be satisfied by collecting signatures from registered Democrats, Republicans, or a voter affiliated with any other party or not affiliated at all; and the petitions may be circulated by any registered voter from any party, or no party at all, registered in any district
3) they have a far longer period of time, in better weather, to collect those signatures – Democrats and Republicans must collect their signatures over a 3-week period during winter, but third-party candidates may collect their signatures at any point over a 21-week period this year, most of it in good weather (March 12 through August 1)
Is it really that hard to get the threshold number from any registered voters if you have even modest support? Michael Morrill (Green Party candidate) and Ken Krawchuk (Libertarian Party candidate) both collected enough signatures to get on the ballot in the 2002 race for Governor. They got on the ballot despite getting very few votes at the general election (Morrill received less than 40,000 votes, barely 1% of the vote; Krawchuk received less than 50,000 votes, far less than 2%).
Michael Morrill, that name sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Oh yeah, he runs Keystone Progress now. So much for the Progressive Summit being indicative of the 2014 Democratic primary when its leader (and many of its participants) can cast a ballot in their straw poll, but can’t even vote for the favored candidate in the Democratic primary (and barely received 1% of the vote when he ran for Governor in 2002).
More information about this candidacy may be found via http://www.facebook.com/glover4governor
“This is because third parties don’t have primaries in Pennsylvania.”
Umm.. no. It’s because the two major parties want to impose draconian requirements on third party candidates to keep them off the ballot.
I can see making the threshold number a little bigger, since they can draw from both parties. But, the “right” number is probably 125% to 150% of the base number. Certainly not more than twice.
During the Gov debates this past weekend, Hanger was the only candidate who strongly supported ballot reform to give third party candidates fair access.