6. Do you have a strategy or plan to achieve ballot access in every state?
*=GPUS recognized candidates
Howie Hawkins*
We are helping Greens get on the ballot in all 50 states and DC. My campaign was helping states with paid and volunteer petitioners until the COVID-19 stay-at-home measures made street petitioning untenable. My campaign has assembled a team of lawyers and ballot access activists who are helping the state parties appeal to state government leaders to relieve us from petitioning and place us on the ballot. If state governments fail to provide relief, we are suing the states in court for relief.
Susan Buchser-Lochocki
I think with the Corona Virus it is impossible to get the signatures needed. We might want to ask the states to change their requirements this year, due to the crisis we are living with currently, and just put whoever gets the Green Party nomination on the ballot.
Dario Hunter*
Ballot access is a nationwide, every campaign, every local party, every Green imperative. We don't see this issue as a competitive one, rather as a collaborative one and every campaign should be open to working together to ensure that whoever is the nominee has access to as many ballot lines as possible.
COVID-19 has dramatically changed the approach of our party and all third parties to ballot access in 2020. The health risks of petitioning combined with the already excessive petitioning requirements in various parts of the country threaten to unfairly block us from ballots in a number of states. We stand with all Greens and our colleagues in this race in demanding that states modify their requirements to account for the crisis, protecting public safety and safeguarding democratic choice by allowing fairer access to ballot lines in 2020. This will require participating in a number of efforts from a number of angles - from legal challenges, to press outreach, to electronic petition gathering. Our prior goals to assist state parties with on the ground efforts to gather petition signatures will have to adjust to liaising with parties and campaigns to fight unsafe requirements in the face of an epidemic. But the values behind our approach – collaboration, outreach and combining efforts – remain the same. And in emphasizing collaboration, our approach remains decidedly Green.