by Steve Trinward
I really did not think it would come to this, but I believe it is time to declare war (in self-defense, of course) on the Tennessee Election Commission thugs …
Their latest autocratic outrage stems from their ruling (today or yesterday?) that the ongoing efforts of the Libertarian Party of Tennessee (recognized as a social club, but not as a political party) will go for naught, unless we run a viable candidate for Governor (one who can secure at least 5 percent of the vote, thus making the current petition drive for ballot-identification as a party at all relevant) – not in four years as we thought, but SIX MONTHS from now!
Otherwise the arduous and expensive task of collecting about 50,000 signatures (33,488 valid), over the past nearly two years, will be utterly wasted, since it would only apply to this election.
This ruling by their resident spokesthug, Mark Goins, Administrator of Elections, just came down this week, and is apparently final. (Funny how while all these signatures were being gathered, at great effort and expense, nobody could be bothered to reach out and tell someone sooner that it was a waste of time, thanks to the repeated tyranny of election commissioners and politicians alike.)
As Dems and GOPers do their little dances, and present their hand-picked minions for election via 25-signature petitions and their own (taxpayer-funded) primaries, Libertarians—as well as Greens, Reformers, Socialists and whatever—must either run as Independents and get lost in the shuffle, or spend countless hours and dollars on “ballot status” petitioning—only to find out as they are now that it has all been a complete waste of time, talent and treasure, since without some measure of public identification as an alternative to the duopolist orthodoxy (and a little more advance notice of the need for someone to do it?), the “party” has less than a snowball’s chance in hell of crossing that 5 percent barrier this November!
This is of course not the only avenue the LPTN has pursued, at least over the last couple of decades, to create a method for showing ourselves on the ballot as who we are and what we represent (umm, can you say … human liberty?), instead of as just one more “Independent” in a long string below the anointed “D” and “R” listed at the top.
Over the years, we have found House reps and Senators to introduce legislative reform. to make the process at least marginally less horrific. Of course, you’ve never seen this, since every time a bill is introduced, the committees (House and/or Senate, usually both) charged with presenting new ideas to the floor find another excuse to stifle and strangle it (and in case you think this is a “partisan” thing, we got the same treatment by the Demoncraps when they rules the Assembly as we now get from the Republiscammers!).
The LPTN has also challenged these restrictive laws in Federal court, and even won its cases . .. only to see the Assembly repeatedly ignore the court edicts that they fix the problem.
So maybe it’s time to get nasty with all this, by declaring war on these autocratic goons (again, in self-defense, because we sure have been attacked enough).
Oddly enough, we have begun such a war, in one way. If you look at the Governor’s ballot for next November, you might see a lot more names listed than usual. Whereas in previous years there have usually been a half-dozen or candidates listed as “Independent” in the race, this time the number will be somewhere in the low-to-mid-thirties! And at least twenty of those will be activists and/or members of that little social club I mentioned, the one that cannot get recognition as even a minor political party in Tennessee.
Yep, the LPTN has endorsed its support (however unofficial it may be) for some twenty activists for liberty, all running for Governor this year. Someone suggested it at the last state convention in March, and twenty or more of those who declared they might do it followed through, and are now on the ballot. As one voice noted at the convention, “If they won’t let us run ONE candidate as a Libertarian, we’ll flood the damned ballot with Independents!”
So November might be interesting despite the setbacks continually perpetrated by the autocratic political hegemony. Stay tuned!