Socialist Ticket Among Only Two Presidential Campaigns Since the 2000 Election With the State Recognition Required to Have Write-in Votes Counted in Michigan
For Immediate Release
September 15th 2008
LANSING – The Michigan Secretary of State’s Bureau of Elections has now confirmed that the 2008 Socialist Party USA ticket of Brian Moore for President and Stewart Alexander for Vice President is certified for official write-in status in the state of Michigan . The qualification establishes that all Michigan counties are now required to count write-in votes cast for the Moore-Alexander ticket and that each county will be informed of this requirement by the Secretary of State’s Office in Lansing . The campaign’s write-in qualification also establishes that the Socialist Party presidential ticket’s vote totals will be published in the listing of election results on the Michigan Secretary of State website, municipal government websites, and printed elsewhere where election results are officially provided. Michigan law requires that all write-in candidates for any office qualify for Official Write-in Status prior to the November Election in order to have votes for them legally counted and reported in state or municipal election results.
The Socialist Party’s Moore-Alexander campaign is among only two presidential tickets to qualify for Official Write-in Status in Michigan for the 2008 election. Michigan’s absurdly restrictive ballot access laws resulted in a particularly odd pairing for Michigan write-in qualification in the 2008 presidential election, of the campaign most explicitly representing movements of social progress, with the campaign that is perhaps the most unrestrained in its reflexive identification with social reaction. The other campaign, which reportedly filed on the same date as that of the Socialist Party is ultra-rightist, Reagan-appointed former U.S. ambassador and 2004 Illinois Republican-nominated U.S. Senatorial candidate Alan Keys. The last presidential ticket to qualify for Official Write-in Status in Michigan, prior to the Moore and Key campaigns this year, was the campaign of Pat Buchanan in 2000. No presidential candidates qualified for Official Write-in Status in Michigan in 2004, although several campaigns that lacked Michigan ballot qualification campaigned in the state that year.
The Michigan Bureau of Elections requires that a presidential ticket seeking to qualify for Official Write-in Status in the State file a signed and notarized Declaration of Intent form, a designation of the Vice Presidential Candidate (if applicable), and a list of the names and addresses of seventeen presidential electors for the campaign, which must be comprised of one presidential elector who is presently registered to vote in each of Michigan’s fifteen congressional districts and two presidential electors representing the state at-large. Moore, like 2004 SP presidential candidate Walter Brown, sent his Declaration of Intent form to the Socialist Party of Michigan which then combined it with the necessary vice presidential candidate designation and a slate of Socialist Party members in each Michigan Congressional district to serve as the geographically distributed slate of Michigan presidential electors for the filing. While the filing deadline for candidates seeking write-in status for all other offices in Michigan this year is the second Friday immediately preceding the election, the state set the much earlier filing deadline for write-in presidential candidates this year as last Friday, September 5th.
The Socialist Party has been denied ballot access as a political party in Michigan for many decades, despite it’s over century long history of participation, including a number of major electoral victories, in Michigan elections. As a result, the Socialist Party of Michigan has run candidates on the Michigan ballot each election year either as independents or jointly through the ballot lines of other qualified parties. In 2004 the Socialist Party presidential ticket of Walter Brown and Mary Alice Hebert qualified for the Michigan ballot through the ballot line of the Natural Law Party, which had dissolved as a political party earlier that year. This year, however, the Ralph Nader campaign persuaded the remaining officer for the Michigan Natural Law Party ballot line to nominate his campaign instead, while presumably seeking to avoid a repeat of his 2004 campaign’s struggles to qualify for the Michigan ballot, which continued long after the Socialist Party presidential ticket had already made the 2004 Michigan ballot under the defunct Natural Law Party’s ballot label.
This year, the Socialist Party is running three other candidates for office in Michigan in addition to its presidential campaign: Jean Treacy for U.S. Congress in the 1st District, covering the state’s upper and northern lower peninsulas (treacy2008.org), Dwain Reynolds for State Board of Education (dreynolds2008.org) who will appear on all General Election ballots in the state, and Matt Erard for 53rd District State Representative (erard2008.org) covering Ann Arbor. All three of this year’s candidates nominated by the Socialist Party of Michigan are qualified for the November ballot through their joint nomination of the Green Party of Michigan, and are campaigning as the dually-nominated candidates of both parties. Since the last election, the Socialist Party of Michigan led the founding of the Michigan Third Parties Coalition, a coalition of the state’s five most well-known minor parties from across the political spectrum, which is seeking state legislative sponsorship for a bill it drafted to lower the state’s requirement for minor party ballot qualification to the signatures of 5,000 registered voters in the state.
“The fact that the presidential ticket – representing the third oldest nationally organized party in the U.S., the only presently existent minor party ever to elect a candidate to the U.S. Congress or as the mayor of a major Michigan city – is barred from appearing on the Michigan ballot is just one more example of the utterly cynical contempt held by the two corporate parties running the state legislature for the most elementary principles of democracy,” said Erard, who noted that the waive of highly prohibitive ballot access laws established in states across the U.S. in the mid 20th Century were designed specifically to keep socialist candidates off state election ballots – and that Michigan’s ballot access laws are presently among the nation’s most draconian.
“The most important thing of all, however, is that Michigan voters have the right to vote Socialist in this presidential election and have their votes count, which, albeit through far less preferable or democratically equitable means, is a right we will, once again this year, have a means of exercising. In the current economic-political period in the U.S., it’s the working class of Michigan that is struggling the hardest and facing the sharpest brunt of attacks from this nation’s ruling corporate elite. Accordingly, it is Michigan’s working class majority that needs its own movement-fostering, political independence-affirming, and future-focused Socialist alternative in this presidential election the very most,” Erard said.
The campaign, which has thus far confirmed its qualification to be listed on the ballot in eight states this year, expects to qualify for at least a dozen state ballots in the November election. The certification of the campaign’s Official Write-in Status in Michigan follows last week’s certification of the campaign’s qualification to appear on the state ballot in Wisconsin, as the most recent of its ballot access achievements this year. It also met the requirements this past week to qualify for the state ballots in Louisiana and Mississippi, however, arbitrary decisions by election officials in both states to shift their announced filing deadlines has compelled the campaign to file separate lawsuits this week to ensure its appearance on this year’s Louisiana and Mississippi ballots. The Libertarian Party presidential campaign joined the Socialist campaign last Friday as a joint plaintiff in its lawsuit against Louisiana, after its presidential nomination was also rejected from the Louisiana ballot on the same capricious grounds. The Socialist Party won a landmark victory in court on August 21st when a federal judge ordered its placement on the Ohio ballot on the basis of the Party’s demonstrated historical and contemporary support within the state of Ohio and nationwide. The Green and Constitution party’s subsequently gained ballot qualification in Ohio following the successful ruling in the Socialist Party’s suit against the state.
In addition to its ballot qualification in Wisconsin and Ohio, and tentative ballot qualification in Louisiana and Mississippi, the campaign is thus far qualified to appear on the 2008 state General Election ballots of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont, and is exploring legal options in states such as Washington and Minnesota, in which the petitions it filed for ballot access were cursorily rejected. It’s qualification for Iowa’s state ballot this year marked the first time that presidential ticket has been nominated by the Convention method under its statute since 1968. In addition to its write-in status qualification in Michigan, it is currently qualified for official write-in status in Indiana, North Carolina, and Texas, and expects to qualify for official write-in status in another twenty-two states by the end of October.
Moore last made a campaign stop in Michigan on July 13th during the Socialist Party’s 2008 National Organizing Conference held in Ann Arbor . He hopes to make a more expansive campaign trip through Michigan, including Detroit, Flint, and possibly southwest and northern Michigan, during the remaining months of the campaign. Vice Presidential candidate Stewart Alexander, previously of New Baltimore, Michigan and now of California, will likely also peg his former home state for a campaign visit before Election Day. An interview with Alexander, in which he discusses struggles of Michigan workers and some of his own experiences growing up in the state, is featured in the current issue of The Michigan Socialist magazine, which can be freely downloaded or ordered in print through the website of the Socialist Party of Michigan.
More information on the 2008 Socialist Party presidential campaign of Brian Moore and Stewart Alexander can be found on the campaign website at: http://www.votesocialist2008.org
CONTACT:
a. Matt Erard
Chair, Socialist Party of Michigan.
National Ballot Access Coordinator.
(248) 765-1605
matterard@sp-usa.org
b. Brian Moore
Socialist Party USA 2008
Presidential Candidate
(352) 686-9936
campaign@votebrianmoore.com
c. Stewart Alexander
Socialist Party USA 2008
Vice Presidential Candidate
(909) 223-2067
stewartalexander4paf@ca.rr.com
Socialist Party of Michigan
P.O. Box 844
Marquette, MI 49855
(906) 362-6342
spmi@spmichigan.org
www.spmichigan.org
Socialist Party USA National Office
Greg Pason, National Secretary
339 Lafayette St.
New York, NY 10012
(212) 982-4586
natsec@socialistparty-usa.org
www.votesocialist2008.org
www.socialistparty-usa.org
www.vote-socialist.org