John --

Biden vs. Trump?!

As if a deadly virus pandemic didn't give us enough to worry about right now, the thought of having Joe Biden and Donald Trump appearing as the sole "choices" for president on the November ballot is itself a pretty sickening thought.

But don’t despair. With your help, we will have a real choice on the ballot!

Whether you are a member of the Green Party, a friend or just curious, the chances are pretty good that you would like to see a better choice for president appear on the general election ballot. Yet, barring something approaching a miracle, that appears to be what the Democratic and Republican parties will be serving up to U.S. voters this November.

However, with your help, we can get a real candidate for social progress on the ballot – an eco-socialist candidate who goes beyond even the best aspects of the Bernie Sanders platform, taking an uncompromising stand for peace, environmental restoration, economic security for all, and health care as a human right.

That candidate will either be longtime New York Green Howie Hawkins, who recently won the Illinois Green Party presidential preference vote with over 73 percent of the total, or rival candidate Dario Hunter. Howie is currently in the lead among the candidates seeking the nomination of the national party, and because he won our preference vote, his name will appear on our ballot access petition. In the event that Dario wins the nomination, our efforts to get Howie on the ballot will still count, and we will be able to substitute the national Green Party’s choice on the November ballot. 

To have that choice on the ballot, however, we need your help.

Even in normal times, it takes a monumental effort to get our candidates on the ballot. Illinois has among the most repressive ballot access laws in the nation. The Democrats and Republicans have created an unlevel playing field, requiring other political parties to gather 25,000 petition signatures from registered voters just to get their candidates’ names on the November ballot – and to collect those signatures in just 90 days. (Democratic and Republican presidential candidates only needed 3,000 signatures, with petitioning taking place last Fall.) In practice, this requires us to actually collect over 50,000 signatures, in order to survive the almost inevitable legal challenges to our petition filing.

You have probably noticed, however, that these are not normal times. Under the current national, state and local emergency declarations limiting public gatherings and public health protocols requiring “social distancing,” normal petitioning has been rendered impossible. At this time, we cannot ask members and volunteers to risk their health by physically approaching strangers, nor can we ask members of the public to get in close physical proximity to a petitioner and handle a clipboard and pen handled by unknown numbers of others. Normal petitioning is simply out of the question for the foreseeable future – yet the normal petitioning period begins tomorrow -- March 24^th -- and ends on June 22^nd.

Under this public health emergency, both the Green Party and the Libertarian Party have written a letter to Governor Pritzker and other responsible state officials demanding emergency relief – specifically, a waiver of our normal petitioning requirement. The complete text of our letter may be found here.

This demand is entirely reasonable. However, unless and until we actually obtain a waiver or other relief from the petitioning requirement, we cannot assume that the same public officials who benefit from the status quo will act reasonably. Therefore, we are asking our members and supporters, and all Illinoisans who support the democratic rights of voters to have their choices appear on the ballot, to take the following steps:

• Download our petition and petitioning instructions here. Beginning on March 24^th, but not before, if you are a registered Illinois voter, fill out and sign the first line yourself, and if you still have normal contact with other Illinois voters (close family members, spouse or partner, co-workers), ask them to fill out and sign on the lines under yours.
• Once you have obtained all of the signatures that you think you can obtain safely, you can fill out the bottom portion of the petition as a circulator, but do not sign on the circulator line just yet, or anything below the circulator signature line. As of right now, there is still a requirement that the circulator signature be notarized. We are hoping to obtain relief from this requirement. We will have a follow-up announcement when we know more. In the meantime, there is no reason to make arrangements with a notary just yet.
• Once you have obtained all of the signatures that you think you can obtain safely, you should also contact our ballot access coordinator, Anna Schiefelbein, at [email protected] or 1-800-670-7048, and let her know that you have one or more petition signatures, leaving your contact information.
• If you are someone who normally would be willing to petition on behalf of our candidates, but cannot do so due to the current emergency, we will soon have affidavit forms on our website for you to fill out. This will help us both in our efforts to persuade public officials to act, and, if necessary, a future legal action to obtain relief.
• Please sign our “virtual” or online petition here. Although it is not a legal substitute for a notarized hard copy petition signature, this will also help both our efforts to persuade public officials to act, and, if necessary, a future legal action to obtain relief.
• Please donate to our ballot access drive. At this point, we do not know whether we will still be required to do the impossible, meet some sort of revised petitioning requirement, or do something else entirely. However, if our efforts to persuade government officials do not succeed, we intend to file a legal challenge seeking an injunction to have our candidates placed on the ballot without the petitioning requirement. In any event, a financial contribution would be of great assistance. Please donate what you can!
• If you know of a specific public event that would have been held this Spring, but has been canceled due to the emergency, please enter it into our event calendar here, even though it won’t be held. The reason is that we want to build a list of petitioning opportunities that we have had to miss, for possible future litigation purposes.

For questions about any of the above, please contact our Ballot Access Coordinator, Anna Schiefelbein, at 1-800-670-7048, or [email protected].

If you are a Sanders supporter, don’t just “#DemExit.” Get on board with the Green Party!

We in the Illinois Green Party certainly sympathize with activists who fought hard to change the Democratic Party from within by working for Bernie Sanders. But once again, the corporate Democrats who run that political party pulled out all the stops to deny him the nomination and give it instead to another rightwing corporatist war-monger, branded as a “moderate,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. (“Moderate” war? “Moderate” destruction of the eco-system? “Moderate” poverty?)

The relentless media attacks against Sanders and the incessant repetition of the dubious claim that Biden was more “electable” successfully herded most mainstream Democrats to get in line – although, as in 2016, outright manipulation of the election count also may have played a significant role in the outcome.

Whatever the causes, as Glen Ford observed in Black Agenda Report: “The Democrats were always a dead end, but folks had to get their asses kicked TWICE to learn that you can’t turn a ruling class party against the ruling class.”

But you don’t have to compromise your values. Indeed, the best of the values embodied by Sanders are far better reflected in the Green Party and its candidates. Please take a look at the Green Party and its candidates, and if you like what you see, please help our ballot access drive by following the steps listed above – and join us!

Illinois Green Party Outreach
http://www.ilgp.org/