When voters go to the polls in November, candidates for the Green Party of Pennsylvania (GPPA) and its national affiliate the Green Party United States (GPUS) will appear on the ballot in Pennsylvania for the first time in eight years.
It isn’t easy being green in Pennsylvania
by Douglas Mason
When voters go to the polls in November, candidates for the Green Party of Pennsylvania (GPPA) and its national affiliate the Green Party United States (GPUS) will appear on the ballot in Pennsylvania for the first time in eight years.
In this key election year, the Green Party of Pennsylvania (GPPA) has struggled to get candidates on the ballot due to the state’s requirements, among the most prohibitive in the nation. GPPA candidates needed to get at least 20,600 valid signatures on their nomination papers in two weeks, but aimed much higher and submitted 35,000 signatures on July 31 to the Pa Bureau of Elections.
“More than 10,000 signatures were voided for things like missing years in dates – i.e. ‘7/15’ instead of ‘7/15/12’,” said Hillary Kane, a GPPA Steering Committee member from Philadelphia.
Pa Democrat and Republican statewide candidates are only required to submit 2,000 valid signatures. The petitions of independent and alternative candidates must have a minimum number “equal to 2 percent of the total vote of the highest vote cast in the state in the previous election,” which in 2006 required Green candidates to gather at least 67,000 valid signatures in their runs for statewide office.
The higher ballot-inclusion bar set for third parties does not align with citizens’ expectations for ballots. According to the 2012 Public Integrity Poll conducted by Democracy Rising, 95 percent of voters want the same requirements for all candidates to get on the ballot, regardless of political party.
“By huge margins, the citizens of Pennsylvania have a far different vision for Pennsylvania than their elected officials,” wrote Tim Potts, co-founder of Democracy Rising Pa, which commissioned the poll.
The Pa General Assembly amended the Pennsylvania Election Code in 1984 with Act 190, which effectively barred any alternative party from nominating candidates in primary elections. The district court of the Eastern District of Pa eventually afforded the “relief” noted above for third parties, but did not declare the Pa statutory scheme unconstitutional.
“Since we are still prohibited from participating in the Pa Primary Election, and have to fund our primary season on our own, I believe the Democrats and Republicans should do likewise and spare the taxpayer,” says Jay Sweeney, a GPPA Steering Committee member from Wyoming County.
Alternative parties and independents have also run into other problems beyond getting on the ballot in this state. Former GPPA U.S. Senate candidate and current state party chair Carl Romanelli from Wilkes-Barre owes about $80,000 in legal fees to the Democratic Party stemming from his 2006 campaign, in which he challenged now-Sen. Bob Casey and Rick Santorum.
According to the Green Party Pa website, in 2008, about a dozen employees of the Pa House of Representatives were convicted (or entered guilty pleas) for, among other crimes, using thousands of taxpayer dollars in an effort to remove Romanelli from the 2006 ballot. Leading the charge was Pa Rep. H. William DeWesse (D-50th), a former Speaker of the House, who had directed his staff and other government employees to challenge the 2006 statewide Green Party petition.
For this and other corrupt activities termed “Bonusgate,” DeWeese was found guilty of 6 felony counts in January (and on April 24 was sentenced to serve 30 months to 5 years in state prison).
The first state preview of the Green Party presidential ticket prior to the national convention happened in May in State College, when the GPPA announced the results of 13 caucuses held throughout the state. Dr. Jill Stein, a general internist (she calls herself a “political therapist”) in Massachusetts, received four of the state’s seven delegates, while comedienne/actress Rosanne Barr, who grows organic macadamia nuts in Hawai’i, was assigned three delegates.
At the party’s convention in Baltimore, Dr. Stein received 66 percent of state delegate votes in the first round, easily becoming the GPUS 2012 presidential candidate. Stein’s VP running mate is Cheri Honkala, the National Coordinator for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign based in Philadelphia. This organization is one of the country’s largest multi-racial, inter-generational movements led by the poor and the homeless.
GPUS hopes to have the Stein-Honkala ticket on the ballots of 45 states. Stein is the first environmentalist ever to head the Green ticket; she is the co-author of two reports, “In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development” in 2000 and “Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging” in 2009.
Taking the stage to Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Standup,” Stein vowed in her acceptance speech to, “turn the White House into a Green House,” and promised to be a true alternative in the presidential contest as a representative of “the only national party that is not bought and paid for by corporate money.
Although Dr. Stein will likely not get an opportunity to face off against other candidates in debate, GPUS has made many strides in recent years. For the first time in its existence, it has qualified for federal matching funds for donations up to $250.
Since announcing her campaign in 2011, Stein has run on her own platform, referred to as the Green New Deal, an emergency four-part program of specific programs for moving this country out of crisis. It consists of the right to a job; the adoption of green technologies and production for a shift to a green economy; reform of the financial sector; and the “strengthening” of democratic government.
Stein has noted that public works programs have put Americans back to work many times since the 1930s, citing as examples the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression, and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act in the 1970s.
The keynote speaker at the GPUS convention was political economist Gar Alperovitz.
“The way you define the system is by who owns the capital wealth...1 percent here own just about half of all the investment capital, while 5 percent owns 70 percent,” said Alperovitz. “And the top 400 people...own more wealth now than the bottom 185 million Americans taken together. That is a medieval structure, and I don’t mean that rhetorically, I mean that technically…the way you concentrated wealth in the medieval era.”
The Centre County Greens will meet at 7 p.m. Monday, September 10th, at Webster’s Café, 133 E. Beaver Ave., to discuss bringing Dr. Stein and/or Cheri Honkala to University Park and the formation of a Campus Greens group.
Doug Mason ran in 1980 on the Consumer/Citizens Party ticket for the U.S. Representative seat in the 5th Congressional District against then Congressman Bill Clinger (R-23rd District).