Peace and Freedom Party off the ballot!!

I am curious who "Tofu" might be and what information he or she may have concerning (a) the mindset of the Secretary of State's office, (b) the involvement of Green Party members and/or (c) the mindset of "disgruntled" Peace and Freedom Party registrants.

I suspect he/she has no information about either (a) or (b) but in fact falls into the (c) category but is too cowardly to give his/her name, and is probably the same person who has posted attacks under different names. I prefer to use my real name in political discourse.

The fact is that there has been no change in the Elections Code which has anything to do with the Secretary of State's attempt to remove Peace and Freedom Party from the ballot. What may have motivated the Republican Secretary of State is the fact that he was just given a demand that, pursuant to Peace and Freedom Party bylaws, Party registrants be permitted to vote in the primary election on resolutions calling for the immediate end to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, if he doesn't back down he will lose in court because the new interpretation of the Elections Code provisions on party qualification is contrary to settled practice dating back to 1934.

As for the criticisms of Peace and Freedom Party which our anonymous critic voices, they are the same ones he/she has voiced under different names in past postings, and are no more valid now than they were then. If he/she didn't approve, he/she could have attended meetings and made that position known. If the critic is who I believe it is, that would not have had much effect because, if I am correct in my supposition, the person has no credibility among Party activists.

At any rate, Peace and Freedom will remain on the ballot, notwithstanding the wishes of our anonymous critic or of the Secretary of State.

While Secretary of State McFarland's claim that the Peace and Freedom Party has lost ballot status has naturally occupied some of the time of the party's officers and attorneys, it has not had its intended effect on the campaigns of the roughly forty people who have taken out papers to run for office on the Peace and Freedom Party line.

All the campaigns are building momentum while the faulty reasoning behind the Secretary of State's "ruling" is exposed to the press and to others in state government. If need be, a suit will be filed next week, and by that time most Peace and Freedom Party candidates will have sufficient nominating and in-lieu signatures in hand to file as soon as the case is won. All eight statewide candidates already have enough signatures to qualify, although a few more are being gathered as insurance.

Ironically, the attack from the Secretary of State may provide the first press coverage for many of our candidates. Several have already distributed press releases explaining that they have obtained their signatures, and that the SoS is unlawfully trying to keep them from filing them. Most of them are emphasizing their opposition to the war and their support for raising the minimum wage in their releases.

Leaders and activists in several other organizations, including the Green Party, have expressed support and indicated availability for press conferences denouncing McPherson's attack on democracy.

While helping at a busy petitioning-and-registration table at midday in San Jacinto, I was interrupted by a call from the Sacramento Bee, whose reporter was apologetic about running the SoS announcement without our rebuttal. He appears now to understand how the law actually reads, though it is hard to know what will find its way into print. We are getting the first fragmentary leaked reports from inside the SoS office on the decision-making process. Sorry, I can't tell everyone about this, it is just for the lawyers, but the claim of the poster of the first article in this string that "disgruntled Peace and Freedom Party members" (ie, himself) had anything to do with this seems to be purest fantasy.

Readers of the material posted on this site should be aware that there appears to be just one person behind almost all the material attacking the Peace and Freedom Party leadership. He is a twisted soul who only got one vote for the top position some years ago, and has hated the Party with a passion ever since. (If he wants to dispute this, he could always provide proof that there are actual real "disgruntled Peace and Freedom Party voters" who have names - but how likely is that?) Everything he posts is either a lie, or a little bit of truth twisted out of all recognition. -Kevin Akin

The Secretary of State's attorney has confirmed that there is no claim made that there have been any statutory changes which support the reversal of 72 years of practice (beginning in 1934) of the Secretary of State's interpretation of the Elections Code provision at issue. Thus the original poster's claim that this action is based on a change in election law is shown to be false. The Secretary of State's attorneys, however, have no answer as yet for why they have changed; indeed, if they are to be believed, they were not even aware that the issue had ever come up before.

The issue is a somewhat arcane one which would interest primarily those interested in election law or perhaps lawyers in general. (I happen to fall into both categories.) It is whether a party which has qualified for the ballot based on registration in a presidential election year (Peace and Freedom re-qualified in 2003, in the lead-up to the 2004 presidential election) is entitled to remain on the ballot through the next election for governor in order to qualify by the alternative means of having sufficient votes for a statewide candidate in the gubernatorial election.

This situation has come up four times: 1934, 1950, 1970, and 1998. In each of those years, a party which had qualified for the ballot based on registration two years earlier, but had not been on the ballot in the gubernatorial election four years earlier, remained on the ballot through that year's gubernatorial election.

Although the section number of the controlling statutes changed at various times, the words of the controlling statute has been the same throughout that period, and remains the same.

The Secretary of State, much as he would like to disenfranchise the voters of a party which focuses on its opposition to the occupation of Iraq, does not make the law and does not have the power to change the law.

He is wrong, and unless he backs off quickly, a court will tell him so.

As a Green Party candidate for US Senate, I am 100% against McPherson's decision to block the P&F Party's ballot status. McPherson is not only attacking the democratic rights of the P&F Party, but is attacking everyone who agrees with the P&F Party's stand for peace, freedom and ecomonic justice. My campaign will do whatever we can to stand in solidarity with the P&F Party to restore their ballot status.

Todd Chretien
Green Party candidate for US Senate
http://www.Todd4Senate.org

Faced with the unanswerable history of how California's laws on party qualification have been applied and with the certainty that a lawsuit would be filed within days, the Secretary of State's office has acknowledged that past practice controls and that Peace and Freedom Party remains a ballot-qualified party in California.

The Party will field a full slate of candidates for statewide offices and many candidates for legislative and congressional seats in this year's election.

Credit goes to Richard Winger of Ballot Access News, who is probablly the country's leading expert on issues of ballot access for third parties and independent candidates. He provided the Secretary of State's office with a list of all the insstances in which party's had lost ballot-qualified status and in which parties which had qualified in presidential election years were regarded as still qualified in the following gubernatorial election. It was a history which they could not answer.

The "answer" given to me when I first contacted the Secretary of State's office, in my capacity as attorney for as well as an activist in the Peace and Freedom Party, was not one which would fly in court. After being told that the attorneys who had examined the matter were sure that they were right, I asked what had changed since 1970 when Peace and Freedom Party remained on the ballot for that year's gubernatorial election after first qualifying for the 1968 presidential election. The response was that the attorneys (whom she refused to identify) probably would not know what had happened in 1970 "because they probably hadn't been born then."

A judge would have insisted on a better answer than that. Secretary of State McPherson's problem was that that was the best answer he had.