I have some bad news for our supporters across America today.
Republican elections officials in two separate states, Florida and Arkansas, have now officially kicked us off the November 8th general election ballot.
In Florida nothing of any substance at all has changed from the two previous elections in which our America’s Party nominee has appeared on the ballot there on the America’s Party of Florida ballot line. The only thing that has in fact changed is the personnel in the General Counsel’s office for the Secretary of State. In other words, one new lawyer reinterpreting what the Florida Code requires, and the exact same Secretary of State who put us on the ballot four years ago under the exact same conditions, going along with that lawyer’s brand-new [mis]interpretation of the law.
In Arkansas, officials in the Secretary of State’s office misdirected our grassroots volunteers in terms of what information is required to be contained on the petition forms. Their office even supplied the official form for petitioning, which apparently doesn’t contain all of the information required by the Arkansas Code. Their office confirmed that we were using the proper forms before petitioning ever commenced. We have full records, including a video record, of them doing this.
I will be writing at great length in the days ahead about the many ways in which the Republican and Democrat parties have disenfranchised We the People with their burdensome ballot access requirements. But, in the short run, it seems that our only recourse in the two affected states is legal recourse. Not an easy thing to pursue for a completely grassroots, volunteer, citizen-led organization.
A word of encouragement: No matter what happens in these two cases in these two states, the work goes forward to make sure that the citizens of most of the states will still be able to vote for our principled conservative ticket, even if it is by writing in my name in most instances. We will be still be qualified in far more than enough states to win the election, numerically-speaking.