Another form of Censorship
Recently the Pennsylvania GOP challenged the required Presidential signature Petitions of two of the three major Alternative Parties in Pennsylvania; The Constitution and Libertarian Parties, even though both Parties had gathered twice the amount of required signatures. Evidently the Romney Campaign does not have enough belief in their message to let the voters hear other voices. This Signature Challenge started in Philly on August 20th and ended a week ago. It’s reminiscent of a recent Moscow Trial, one difference being that Vladmir Putin wants to keep his female protestors in jail. In Pennsylvania, they merely want to fine these other voices $80,000 or so (Ralph Nader and Carl Romanelli) and keep them off the ballot. The Pa Greens who were not challenged this year by the Pa Democrats, unlike in 2008, (and non-presidential years 2006 and 2010) are helping with these Challenges. As the Industrial Workers of the World said “An injury to one is an injury to all”.
To paraphrasea book title by John Stormer, “None dare call it Censorship”, but what would you call it if the Candidate you want to vote for, be it Virgil Goode ( Constitution Party) or Gary Johnston of The (Libertarian Party) or Cynthia McKinney ( Greens, 2008) is not on the ballot. Even if one has Voter ID does it matter if your Candidate of Choice is not on in a state where the counting of write in votes is occasional at best? If this is not voter suppression, or idea suppression, the removal of civil and voting rights, what should we call it? If this were happening in China or Russia, the US would be pontificating at The United Nations, speaking of sanctions, and piously saying this could never happen in our Democracy.
At the end of this challenge, the Constitution Party
decided they couldn’t afford the possible costs (100,000) while the Libertarians stayed the long course and won. I’m proud to say I was a minor part of this major fight.
Maybe one year we will have a functioning Democracy in Pennsylvania, but it hasn’t happened under either Corbett or Rendell.
The Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition, of which I am a
Member, continues to fight for this. Contact me at writ1.verizon.net or see
PennsylvaniaBallotAccess.org for further information.
To quote noted Poet Bob Ocean
“Thanks for going through this with me”
robertthesmall 