STRATEGY MEETING SUNDAY, JULY 13 There will be a joint strategizing/planning meeting of the Gary Shepherd and Tabitha Tripp campaigns this Sunday, July 13, at 2 p.m. at the home of E.G. Hughes and Cathy Field, at the corner of South Tower Road and Alveria Drive in Carbondale. Anyone who has, or is willing to do work for either campaign is welcome to attend. The purpose of the meeting will be to discuss and plan how to conduct an effective write-in campaign for both candidates. Since both campaigns, despite a lot of hard work, fell short of what the State Board of Elections states is the requisite number of petition signatures, this will probably be the way in which both candidates will have to seek votes. I use the word probably intentionally. Green Party attorneys are doing a lot of volunteer work preparing to challenge the overly burdensome system used to keep non-corporate-party candidates off the ballot. That system is being challenged directly before the Board and may also be the subject of a federal suit for both Tabitha and Gary. Similar actions are being taken on behalf of our statewide slate of candidates. Although the state slate did turn in signatures well in excess of the required minimum, there was not as much padding as we would have liked. In short, there is still some hope that, through such means, actual ballot placement for Gary and Tabitha might be achieved, and it is a fight worth waging. But, viewed objectively, it will be an uphill battle, with some chance of success but probably not something you would bet on. Accordingly, it makes sense to do some planning for write-in campaigns and sketching out what they might look like. Please bring your thoughts and ideas to the meeting. One might be inclined to think of a write-in campaign as an exercise in futility. But historically, they sometimes capture the imagination of the public as an exercise in voter empowerment or rebellion, and breakthroughs have been achieved. In any event, we are not prisoners of conventional political wisdom anyway, so why not give it a try? To their credit, both Tabitha and Gary have embraced the idea. Thank you and a big thank you to all who worked to collect signatures, Rich Whitney
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 01:56:30 +0000
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