The question for Sestak to answer is: Does Joe think it’s fair for Packer to have four times the ballot requirement?

Even with Sestak’s challenges, Packer must be well above the threshold Sestak needed to get on the ballot.

Does Sestak agree with the unfair rules? If Sestak believes the rules are unfair, he should respect Packer having gotten a “fair”.

Sestak claims he’s running for people to have a voice in our democracy.

Will someone ask Sestak if he supports PA senate bill 252?

Ask Joe what number of signatures would be a “fair” threshold.

Packer should go on MSNBC and let people know how twisted the rules are in PA.

Dan-

Can we get some numbers on this?

How many signatures did Packer file?
How many does he need?
How many did Sestak challenge?

This will tell us how many Packer needs to defend/correct.

David:
The election code is the the law which every candidate ( big or small) has to abide by and they are the “rules of the game” and even when a candidate loses, get challanged and struck or an imperfect candidate wins it is the result of the will of the people including the laws that were enacted by our democratically elected legislature.
Whining about being “unfair” and being “picked on” is a poor excuse for not wanting to play by the rules of the game that every candidate should know and be prepared for from the git go.
It would be a more “fair” world if David could just anoint and crown his picks I guess.

@Anthracite – the petition process is grossly unfair to anyone who does not have an R or D behind their name. The Governor and US Senate candidates for Republicans and Democrats need to collect 2,000 signatures to get on the primary ballot. You can only be in the primary if you have at least 15% of total registered voters in Pennsylvania.

For a 3rd party or independent candidates, you must collect a minumum of 2% of the highest number of votes cast in the last election for a statewide office. This year, that total is 19,000. in 2006, it was 67,000.

Most people would say that collecting 10x to 33x as many signatures as your competitors is “unfair” and maybe even grossly unfair.

3rd parties do play by the rules – but the challenges being brought by Rs and Ds are using any excuse possible to get these signatures stricken. Leaving off an initial, omitting a JR or Sr even when the two don’t reside in the same house.

And with the recent BonusGate investigation, it was shown that sitting legislators were using their office staff to review and challenge the petitions while working for the State, which is against the law.

Again, is this fair? Is this just? No — its the big two parties trying to control what people can vote on. If it doesn’t benefit the Party, the people don’t need to see it.

Don’t Sestak The Bully chase you off the ballot… hang in there!

Is there somewhere those of us who believe in democracy can send contributions to help the third party candidates fight this?

Anthracite-
I guess if they put in Jim Crow laws, you’d be okay with that?

The third party ballot rules are a form of political Jim Crow against third party candidates. It’s not like the third party candidates are being allowed to play by the same rules.

If Sestak supports the election reforms of PA Senate bill 252, then he shouldn’t make any challenges that contradict the goals of that legislation.

Democracy is supposed to be about protecting the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

The questions reporters should be asking Sestak is:
Does he support PA SB 252?
How much of a double-standard does he support?
How much unfairness is OK in his book?

What does Sestak consider “unfair” about letting the voters decide?

Mel,
I will support you financially and with my time to make sure you are on the ballot representing me.
If you aren’t on the ballot, I don’t see another candidate who represents me. So I will not be throwing my vote away on a candidate like Joe Sestak who is undemocratic and claims to want to give a voice to the people but takes away my voice.

David:
Jim Crow? Will your kartoon frothing ever stop. You, as I understand it are a registered democrat and voted in the last election and your candidate Arlen Specter lost. Your “vote a matic” is crap. Get over it.
In your revenge drive garbled mish-mosh of phony high toned pseudo legal arguments you are sounding like Glen Beck and Momma Grizzly.
Reality check here: In a democracy the vote of the majority prevails in an election which necessarily “oppresses” the minority. The Constitution and Law is enacted by our democratically elected representatives and applied by the elected Courts. Those laws are what balance the unrestrained will of the electorate. Nothing “unfair”, or high minded in your opposition just a set of rules you don’t want today because you hate a winning candidate personally

“Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.”
Abraham Lincoln

Thank you supporters of democracy! I am one of the Green Party candidates for State Representative who was not challenged. This has been an ongoing issue for third parties in Pennsylvania and there have been several law suits. Third parties have yet to prevail. You can find a link to donate to the Green Party at our web page gpofpa.org.

Greens, Libertarians, Independents and others have formed the Ballot
Access Coalition. A piece of legislation called the Voters Choice Act was crafted by this group. It would make the signature requirements for third party and independent candidates the same as the major parties. It has not moved from committee. You may also want to let your representatives know you support the Voters Choice Act.

I would like to think that the bad press from bonusgate and its links to petition challenges, from romanelli’s lawsuit against pa democratic party leaders, and from nader’s lawsuit against national democratic party leaders, would make a candidate hesitate to align himself with such anti-democratic strategies. If the current statewide challenges stand, pa will have only two recognized parties for another two years.

I heard that Mel Packer and his supporters got desperate and just scribbled down any fake names they could think of at the last minute to at least get the signatures in. You don’t hear this utterly unqualified maniac addressing the issue of fake names.

It’s totally ridiculous that a Green Party candidate without a monolithic party apparatus behind them should have to get 19,000 signatures but the Democratic candidate needs only to get 2,000. Unfortunately, it’s in the interests of the people in power who could change the legislation to leave this double standard exactly as it is.

@MM5, Oh you “heard” they were making up fake names did you? Your pitiful troll attempt shows your ignorance. It’s not “fake names” they go after. Reasons for technically disallowing signatures include:

nicknames, middle initials, voter registration address (sometimes at odds with “place of residence” as the petition asks for), street names (particularly variations regarding numbered and directional streets), lack of a signature record in the statewide SURE voter database, reversing signature and printed name on the petition, differences between new mail addresses and previous Rural Route addresses, “illegible” signatures or addresses that may be arbitrary based on the reviewer’s ability or bias.

Jay-
I’m surprised that the current ballot rules can’t be overturned as unconstitutional. We need better judges.

MM5-
I heard that people posting with two identical initials and a number like to have sex with animals. I wonder if we have similar sources for this? (ie pulling info out of our rear orifices)

You are claiming (without basis) a massive forgery operation.

TO MEL PACKER-
Please post scans of the Sestak challenges to your site, Facebook page, blog, etc. so the online community can see not only how petty Sestak’s challenges are, but so people can divide up the work to help you fight this challenge.

I know from the VodVarka challenges in the spring that the Sestak campaign is pretty sloppy and throw in a lot of bad-faith challenges for people who are correctly registered. They obviously realize it’s hard/expensive to check all of them.

What is the size of the challenge and how many of the challenges need to be defeated to meet the already unfair threshold?

Aug 10th, 2010

Jay-
I’m surprised that the current ballot rules can’t be overturned as unconstitutional. We need better judges.

David, I agree, unfortunately, judges are partisan too.

Wasn’t it Joe Sestak who filed a challenge aganist Joe Vodvarka during the Democratic Primary but then later in an interview said that the Democratic Party should encourage others to run for office?

Democrats made a deal with the devil when they voted for Joe Sestak because he’s nothing but a sleeze-ball politician who’s only looking out for his own interests; not that of the people. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Put politics aside, a US Senator should be a person who holds characteristics such as honor, integrity, and princple. Joe Sestak exhibits none of those characteristics!

As a good Democrat I was going to hold my nose and vote for this guy. But the way he’s acted since winning the primary is disgusting. He’s called out the President and other party leaders for not endorsing him in the primary, he always cries foul whenever Toomey releases a negative ad on him but then turn around and does the exact same thing, and now he’s challengng the Green Party candidate’s right to participate in a Democration election.

Is this what “Democracy looks like” in the eyes of Joe Sestak?

Let’s see how Sestak apologists spin this one.

Lance-
Joe was an Admiral. Democracy hasn’t been a factor in his decision making philosophy of a long time (if ever).

It’s not as if these rules suddenly appeared out of thin air. If those whining here about how unfair it all is had worked for a few years to get the rules changed, maybe the threshold would have already been lowered. But that didn’t happen. Now that the election is just a few months away, the moaning about “bullies” and “fairness” starts.

Politics gets played according the rules that are in place. If you break those rules, you deserve to be punished. If you play by the rules, you are running a clean campaign.

And if you don’t like the rules, you work to get them changed.

Or, as in this case, whine about them.

Mel – keep fighting the good fight. The current ballot access laws in Pennsylvania are draconian and obsolete, and completely unlike the far more reasonable laws of 48 other states. Unfortunately,as I was informed in Rogers v. Cortes a few years ago, Pennsylvania’s partisan appellate judges will scrounge for excuses to justify these laws.

This third party candidate, also being sued on signatures, though by a Republican too cowardly to sign his own signature challenge, is right with you on whatever decision you make.

Bruce – perhaps you’ve missed that there have easily been a dozen suits against the repressive ballot access laws of this state. Having been the plaintiff in one of the most recent, I’m quite familiar with their history. Maybe you should become more so before you accuse Mel of whinging.

Bruce-
First of all, I’ve opposed these unfair ballot access rules since I became aware of them several years ago. What happened to Ralph Nader was a disgrace.

Second the Green party’s prior knowledge of the unfair requirements doesn’t make them “fair”.

My state reps (leg and senate) support reform, as does my potential new congressman.

Third, your tone suggests that Packer didn’t make the threshold. We know from past challenges (including by Sestak) that underfunded candidates can’t defend themselves against bad faith challenges of legitimate petition signatures. Also, the database is often out of date for recently married women who assume that under motor voter laws that their voter records are updated when they apply for a new drivers license.

So, it’s wrong to assume (accuse) rule breaking by Packer, especially when Sestak already has a tracker record of frivolous bad faith challenges.

Ask Holy Joe if he thinks the double standard is “fair” and whether he’s running to help those unfairly silenced.

What Joe is doing is counter to the high moral principles he pretends to have on the campaign trail.

We know Joe likes to vote for more war. Joe doesn’t like to pay non-family members more than minimum wage. Joe runs “against” people rather than “for” ideals. Joe bailed on ACORN. Joe likes warrantless wiretaps, telecom immunity and funding Dick Cheney.

Having a Green Party candidate would be a joy.

@ MM5:

This sounds like the same rehashed smear campaign from 2004 and 2006. The Democratic disinformation machine is reliable, if not very creative.

I was with Ed, Mel and a dozen other volunteers a couple days before and a few hours before the Green Party completed our filing. We scrambled to collect signatures from voters in order to be sure we met the requirements. All available hands were on the streets. There were no efforts to “make up” nor to forge signatures. Neither Mel nor other Greens present would have tolerated that.

Going back to the fundamentals, the two party system is an alternative and legislatively created to the parliamentary chaos of a multi party European parliamentary system that was subordinate to the crown. Having unlimited single issue and minor party political clubs littering the ballot dilutes the effectiveness of the elected. Further, as you can see it also fosters an instability in the government that can be dissolved at the whim of coalitions of extreme fringes.
It seems that the word “unfair” is used to whine about the system that is entirely voluntary and the by product of our elected officials and Constitution.
Can you imagine a ballot of a hundred minor candidates who all profess to be worthy but have no support, no ideas or even work hard enough to have their neighbors support their getting on the ballot let alone being elected.

Anthracite-
The current ballot requirements are not trivial. In the 7th district, Meehan barely made it after all his forged petitions were thrown out.

The idea of a hundred minor candidates is ludicrous (as are most of your arguments). The fairness issue regards having the minor candidates meet a higher threshold than the major candidates.

With all the gridlock in Washington, it would help if there were a dozen third party senators who were not beholden to either party and could tip the balance for good policies. The GOP is abusing the filibuster to stop policies some of their members have advocated in the past, but now the GOP is just trying to be obstructionists.

Anthracite,

The two party system is a temporary stable state that occurs between upheavals and realignments among voters. It is not legislated, but the two current parties have passed much legislation to obstruct smaller parties and prevent any potential for voters to realign. This also serves to dis-empower voters from having real influence on the direction and policies of their party. This has led to massive voter dissatisfaction, disengagement and dismal voter turnout.

The Green Party is not asking for a parliamentary system, though such systems function well in many countries without monarchies. The Green Party is not asking that anybody be able to throw their name on the ballot on a whim. We seek to have the same requirements as major party candidates.

Primaries often see 4 or 5 candidates for an office and somehow voters can sort through the choices. There is no sound reason not to have varied choices in the general election as well. The Green Party also supports IRV which would resolve the dilemma voters face in some multi-candidate elections.

We are not ballot “litter”. We have a full platform of issues and an effective communicator nominated to present them. Many volunteers across the state have put in thousands of hours collecting the required signatures to file for office, and working to build our campaigns. Twenty thousand Pennsylvanians have said they support the Green Party being on the ballot. It is time for Sestak to face the competition.

Don’t get to high and mighty- I am betting that there are more than a few dead people and Elmer Fudds in your “twenty thousand” judging from Perot, Nader and Romanelli ballot challenges.
Once you and your volunteers qualify for party status under the law- have a ball. It is not our fault that the green party doesnt have or want a organized base or fails or refuses to systematically gets its candidates elected.
Until then, enjoy your ability to speak you mind, express your views and vote your consciences in the system you have chosen to compete in and try and get the voters favor.

@Anthracite — do you know how hard it is to qualify for “party status” in Pennsylvania? To be a major party, you need 15% of the total registered voters. Only Rs and Ds meet that requirement, and they are the only ones who can participate in the primaries.

To get “Minor Party Status”, you need at least 2% of the total votes in a state-wide election. However, if your party doesn’t qualify because of the draconian ballot access laws for third parties and independent, how will anyone even know that there are other options?

State Republican and Democrat Committees are so consumed with keeping as much power as possible, they will do anything legal (and some illegal — Bonusgate) to keep any competitors from even appearing on the ballot.

It’s disgusting, unethical, and not surprising at all given the decades of corruption in this state. Unfortunately, the ones trying to change from the system are blackballed or challenged off the primary ballot, and any outsiders are ridiculed, dragged thru the mud and challenged as well.

If the signatures that appear on Mel’s petitions are legal and correct then he should welcome the opportunity to prove that. If not then he just fails to meet the standards called for in our election laws and should not have a place on the ballot,otherwise we would just have people copying names from the phone book.

Once again, voters interested in open debate and the free exchange of ideas have been betrayed by a candidate purporting to espouse those very ideals. Last week, Joe Sestak, the “progressive”candidate for US Senate, challenged the candidacy of his third party opponents. This move makes it virtually impossible for the third parties to fully represent their views and ideas and engage in open debate in Pennsylvania.

Regardless of whether or not one is interested in voting for a third party, voters should be outraged at the ability of the strong to squash the voices of the weak. Third parties do not have the resources to fight off attacks from the major parties that have huge war chests of money at their disposal. Therefore, new ideas and unique contributions to public debate are all but silenced by powers claiming to have our best interests at heart.

Be it red or blue, the true colors of the two major parties are becoming less and less attractive to voters, that much is clear. Nearly 40% of voters now identify as Independent, and Sestak’s latest tactic is a good example of why. Voters are angered by this type of blatant partisan politics that thwarts true progress in favor of power grabbing and stonewalling. More voices should be welcomed in political discourse, not fewer. We need new ideas and non-partisan points of view introduced into the current partisan grid-lock that grips our legislature.

I urge every voter who is fed up with partisan politics to show your displeasure by registering Independent. The two major parties have gotten a free ride for too long, and it is time to let them know that they only have as much power as we are willing to give them. We need diverse opinions, new ideas, and all voices to be heard if we are to move forward together in strength and freedom.