U.S. third parties marginalized in midterms

How Third Parties Are Getting Screwed This Election Season - Reason.com Matt Walsh & Alexis Garcia:

October 26, 2018 - "The 2018 midterms have been chock full of two-party shenanigans, all too often aided and abetted by journalists, pollsters, and the voters themselves.

"It all starts with ballot access. If a state government considers you a 'major party,' getting on the ballot is a snap. Worst-case scenario, you need to collect signatures from a tiny fraction of your own registered voter base. Best case, you just show up.

"Third-party and independent candidates, on the other hand, have to collect tens of thousands of signatures in some states – 15,000 to run for governor in New York, for example, including at least 100 in each congressional district. Arizona Republicans ... changed the law to say that Libertarians need to collect signatures not just from their own members but from registered independents as well. And by the way, the Green Party is subject to a less stringent set of rules.... Some states push their filing deadlines all the way back to a year before the election....

"New Hampshire this year herded all third parties under the same ballot line, confusingly titled 'Libertarians and Other Candidates.' New Mexico tried — and thankfully failed — to institute a 'straight party' ballot, meaning voters in this 3:2 Democratic state could automatically vote for all the candidates in one party by checking off just one box....

"Getting your name on the ballot doesn't mean it will be included in the polls. The Nevada race for U.S. Senate is universally rated a tossup, and yet the first three independent polls released this October failed to include Libertarian Tim Hagan...

"How about debates? Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dale Kerns was assured of a spot on stage, then uninvited. Texas gubernatorial candidate Mark Tippets was told he didn't have enough qualifying press, in part because his coverage in the Spanish-language media didn't count.... Iowa governor candidate Jake Porter, who's polling higher than any other L.P. statehouse contender, says his debate invitations were rescinded, in part because he refused to buy commercials.

"'The freer and more general the competition,' Adam Smith wrote in 1776, the more 'advantageous' it will be to the public. Competitors, he warned, will 'always' try 'to widen the market and to narrow the competition.' For too long we have allowed our system of government, that other glorious achievement from 1776, to be controlled by the market-rigging forces Smith warned us about. It's about time to make American politics competitive again."

Read more: https://reason.com/reasontv/2018/10/26/how-third-parties-being-screwed-this-ele
'via Blog this'

CNN: Johnson campaign "could change America"

2018 election: 14 midterm races that could change America (opinion) - CNN:

October 2, 2018 - "The midterm elections, a little more than a month away, are a national drama -- with voters deciding whether Republican control of the House and Senate will give way to Democrats, who have been hankering for a chance to challenge the priorities and actions of President Donald Trump. But they are also an intensely local story as voters get ready to make their choices in 435 House and 35 Senate races and in 36 gubernatorial contests. We asked commentators to tell us which race they are watching most closely and why. The views expressed are solely their own....

"Robby Soave: New Mexico Senate race:

"Those who aren't on board with President Donald Trump's agenda but just can't bring themselves to support the Democrats have a sliver of hope in New Mexico, where former Gov. Gary Johnson, a libertarian, has entered a three-way race for a US Senate seat.

"As the Libertarian Party's candidate for president in the 2016 election, Johnson earned 3% of the vote, the best finish for a national third-party candidate in 20 years. Still, the outcome was something of a disappointment for Johnson, who had hoped to capitalize on historic levels of dissatisfaction with the two main party candidates, but instead became a punchline after a series of gaffes. (Remember, "what is Aleppo?") Afterward, he swore he was done with politics.

"But now Johnson is mounting an unlikely but far from impossible challenge to incumbent Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich. A former Republican governor of the typically blue state, Johnson is still popular in New Mexico: A recent poll showed Heinrich leading the race at 39%, with 21% for Johnson and 11% for Republican Mike Rich. Some 30% are still undecided.

"Johnson is an economic conservative known for vetoing hundreds of bills during his first term in office. But he's also a social liberal who supports abortion rights, immigration and drug legalization. And he's no fan of the President; in fact, he said Trump's election 'could be the end of the republic as we know it.' A good showing for Johnson would be a win for the Libertarian Party, while also proving that centrist liberals, independents and Never Trump Republicans can find a compromise candidate.

"Robby Soave writes for the libertarian magazine Reason. Follow him on Twitter"

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/opinions/2018-midterm-campaign-watch-roundup-opinion/index.html
'via Blog this'

Libertarian Metz gets into GA governor debate

Predicting a runoff, Libertarian wants protest vote - Jill Nolin, CHNI - WALB 10 News:

October 25, 2018 - "Tired of two-party politics? The lesser-known third-party candidate in the closely watched Georgia gubernatorial race says he wants your 'protest' vote.

"'This is going to be a runoff anyway,' Ted Metz, who is running as a Libertarian, said during the first televised debate. 'If you’re tired of the two-party system and the two-party tyranny of the oligarchs running the planet, then a vote for me is a protest vote to show them that you are sick and tired of the same ol’ stuff.'

"Metz, a Mableton retiree who worked in the insurance industry, used candidate-to-candidate questions during Tuesday night’s Atlanta Press Club debate to highlight the flaws of both Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams. The debate aired live on Georgia Public Broadcasting.

"Abrams and Kemp are running neck and neck with just a couple weeks left before the Nov. 6 election, according to recent polls.... Metz has lagged far behind ... mustering just 1 or 2 percent of support from likely voters in recent polls. And he’s raised just $6,000 in a race that has smashed state fundraising records.

"But if Metz cobbles together enough votes to deny Abrams and Kemp the votes needed for a majority, the race to name Georgia’s next governor could run into December....

"Metz used his time on screen to laud the usefulness of industrial hemp, call for smaller government and decry the two-party political system.

"He said lower voter turnout – which he attributed to disinterested independent voters – is a bigger issue than voter suppression, which has become a major election issue in the homestretch of the race.

"'They’re trying to pull us apart [to] vote for one of the two teams,' Metz said. 'There are more people that are more interested in hearing a third voice than voting for team red or team blue.'"

Read more: https://www.walb.com/2018/10/25/predicting-runoff-libertarian-wants-protest-vote/
'via Blog this'

Teen toking not affected by shops near schools, California study finds

Pot Shops Near Schools Do Not Lead to Increased Teen Use, New Study Says - NEWS - Merry Jane:

August 21, 2018 - "Across America’s legal weed bastions, strict zoning regulations have often pigeonholed pot shops in sparsely-populated industrial regions and designated zones. If you listen to regulators tell it, local zoning rules are necessary to keep the adults-only plant away from schools, daycares, public parks, and other child-friendly spaces. In Detroit and Denver, youth-focused zoning regulations have lead to the demise of multiple cannabis businesses.

"In practice, though, teenagers who walk by dispensaries on their way to chemistry class are no more likely to light up a joint than their counterparts in a city or state that has banned retail pot sales.

"Looking at responses to California’s annual Student Tobacco Survey from more than 40,000 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, UCSD researchers keyed in on specific schools, comparing student cannabis use habits to the location of nearby medical marijuana dispensaries. After examining the tendencies of students living within three miles of a dispensary to those outside of those zones, the study’s authors concluded that there was no connection between pot shop placement and teen use.

"'The distance from school to the nearest medical marijuana dispensary was not associated with adolescents’ use of marijuana in the past month or susceptibility to use marijuana in the future, nor was the weighted count of medical marijuana dispensaries within the 3-mile band of school,' the study’s authors wrote. 'Neither the product price nor the product variety in the dispensary nearest to school was associated with marijuana use or susceptibility to use. The results were robust to different specifications of medical marijuana measures.'

"The UCSD research is the latest in a string of studies that has rebuked prohibitionist claims that legalization will lead to more red-eyed students than ever before. Time and again, university researchers have crunched the numbers and found stagnant or decreasing rates of adolescent pot use in the years after states legalized.

"'We did not find empirical support of the associations of medical marijuana availability, price, and product variety around schools with adolescents' marijuana use and susceptibility to use,' the UCSD study concluded. 'Efforts should be taken to monitor changes in contextual environments of marijuana use in the new scheme of recreational marijuana legalization and examine the causal effects of these contextual factors to better inform policy making.'"

Read more: https://merryjane.com/news/pot-shops-near-schools-do-not-lead-to-increased-teen-use-new-study-says
'via Blog this'

Larry Sharpe excluded from NY governor debate

Larry Sharpe Excluded from NY Gubernatorial Debate · 71 Republic - Ryan Lau:

October 22, 2018 - "The New York race for governor has been a vicious battle thus far. Democrat incumbent Andrew Cuomo ... faces off against a number of opponents: Republican Marc Molinaro, Libertarian Larry Sharpe, Independent Stephanie Miner, and the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins. However, only Molinaro will get to debate live with Cuomo.

"The Monday night move comes after a number of polls showed that the third-party candidates have very low name recognition. Specifically, a whopping 84 percent of voters had not heard of Larry Sharpe. Figures were similar for Miner and Hawkins, at 77 and 86 percent, respectively. Of the voters who had heard of Sharpe, one-third of them had a positive opinion....

"Most of the polls excluded the third-party candidates entirely.... Sharpe’s performance in a Gravis Marketing poll was the highest of the three candidates: even so, he received only 13% in this poll.

"Third parties, such as the Libertarian Party, have faced exclusion from debates in the past. Most notably, the 2016 Presidential debates did not feature Gary Johnson, who then launched a major lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates.... Johnson now is running for New Mexico Senate.

"Sharpe took to Twitter Monday, condemning the media’s decision to exclude the third-party candidates. He strongly believes that with fair coverage, he could win the race.

(1) My poll numbers prove that I could easily walk away with 30% of the vote and win if my name recognition were equal to that of Cuomo. That tells you that people want change, but they are kept in the dark by the media that is paying to play with Cuomo.

"Monday night’s debate, which will be live on Tuesday night at 7 P.M. EST, is the only scheduled discourse between the two candidates before the election. Thus, Sharpe and the other third-party candidates have lost a key opportunity to increase their low name recognition."

Read more: https://71republic.com/2018/10/22/larry-sharpe-excluded-debate/
'via Blog this'

Maine adopts ranked-choice voting for midterms

Maine Voters Prepare to Rank Their Congressional Candidates to Choose Winners - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Scott Shackford:

October 23, 2018 - "In just a couple of weeks we're all going to see an election experiment that could perhaps change the way votes are counted.... November's election will be Maine's first use of ranked-choice voting to determine the winners of three elections — for one U.S. senator and two U.S. House seats. And with the way polls for at least one race are going, independent-minded voters are going to affect the outcome in a manner that can actually be tracked.

"In ranked-choice voting, people are asked not to just select one candidate for office, but to rank the candidates by order of preference. If there are four candidates, for example, you can choose the candidate you prefer the most and also rank the others second, third, and fourth....

"[F]or a candidate to win, he or she must have a majority of the votes, not just a plurality. If no candidate wins a majority of the vote, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated from the race.... The ballots are tallied again, and for those who voted for the eliminated [candidate], their second choice is counted instead. And so it goes, until one candidate has a majority....

"The point of ranked-choice voting is to try to enfranchise voters by making it possible to vote for third-party or independent candidates without actually 'throwing their vote away.' Proponents of ranked-choice voting see it as a tool of making candidates reach out to a larger pool of voters rather than just playing to their voting bases.... Ranked-choice voting doesn't necessarily make it easier for third-party candidates to win, but it makes their voices and their voters harder to ignore.

"Several cities in the United States have ranked-choice voting for local races... Maine, as a result of a couple of state ballot initiatives, will be implementing it for the first time....

"Now attention is focused on Maine's 2nd Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin is fending off a challenge from Democrat Jared Golden, and two independents [with] almost no chance of winning, getting less than 10 percent of the vote between the two of them in most polls. But the polls also show pretty much a dead heat between Poliquin and Golden.... Therefore, what's going to determine the outcome of this race may very well be who voters for the two independents selected as their second choice — or even their third.....

"[I]ndependent voters will determine the outcome of the race in a way that doesn't make them 'spoilers'.... They can vote for their favorite and then select the Democrat or the Republican as their second choice. Or they may not. Voters aren't required to rank their choices. It's an option....

"Partisans often whine that third-party voters end up helping their opponents. On a fundamental level, this is political entitlement nonsense that improperly treats voters like they belong to the political parties instead of the other way around. But it's also often not entirely true. Polling often shows third-party voters split between the main parties. In this election, we'll get to be able to track where independent votes actually go."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/10/23/maine-voters-prepare-to-rank-their-congr
'via Blog this'

Pro-Paul PAC invests $2M in Johnson campaign (video)

Protect Freedom PAC Endorses Gary Johnson for U.S. Senate in New Mexico & Launches Statewide TV & Digital Ad Campaign - Protect Freedom PAC:

October 5, 2018 - "Protect Freedom PAC is announcing its endorsement of Gary Johnson for U.S. Senate in New Mexico. The organization has launched a $2 million statewide campaign on broadcast, cable, and satellite TV, as well as on digital.

"Protect Freedom PAC consultant and spokesman Michael Biundo stated:

Gary Johnson is the independent, conservative voice that Washington needs. Gary has a strong record as New Mexico's Governor of keeping his promise to cut taxes, shrink state government, and reduce spending. He will be an effective ally to Senator Rand Paul in the United States Senate at a time where voters are hungry to defeat the Washington machine, drain the swamp, and take back our country. We are excited to endorse Gary today and look forward to working towards victory in November.

[The Protect Freedom PAC was founded in 2017 to support 'current and future allies' of U.S. Senator Rand Paul. Paul endorsed Johnson in August 2018. - ed.]