The Green Party’s recent problems gaining access to North Carolina’s election ballot raise concerns from another political group that has had to work to win a ballot spot.

Brian Irving, executive director of the North Carolina Libertarian Party, told Carolina Journal that the eight times his party turned in petitions for certification, they never saw the level of scrutiny by the State Board of Elections that the Green Party received in its recent failed certification effort. Irving, who has helped lead NCLP for three decades, said that typically, the state board would accept signatures verified by county elections boards as valid and wouldn’t refuse to certify based on unproven questions about those signatures. 

The NY Board of Elections has ruled that petitions filed by all of the minor political parties to get candidates on the ballot in November were invalid and failed to meet the very high threshhold of 45,000 valid sigatures statewide.

Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Governor and former Green Party candidate for President; Larry Sharpe, the Libertarian Party for Governor and former Libertarian Party candidate for vice-president; and Harry Wilson, who recently lost the republican primary for Governor, was placed on the ballot by the UniteNY party. It is unclear whether Wilson would have accepted the UniteNY party line, but the point was moot as Unite joined with the Green, Libertarian, Freedom, and New Visions candidates in being denied ballot access this year.

• "It's a slap in the face to the thousands of people who signed," said Matthew Hoh, the Green Party's presumptive U.S. Senate nominee.

The North Carolina Green Party's presumptive U.S. Senate nominee accused the state's Democratically-controlled Board of Elections of "a corrupt, lawless, and blatantly partisan attack on democracy" after it voted Thursday against certifying Green Party's petition for its candidates to appear on the November ballot.

• The last time democracy nearly died all over the world, and almost all at once, Americans argued about it, and then they tried to fix it

If the Republican and Democratic Parties are virtually identical on most issues involving big money, like the military, banking, corporations, and so on, you don't have a democracy. Democracy implies choice among many alternatives. We have virtually no alternatives. Hence this video by Briahna Joy Gray, which spells out a "Dem-Exit" in progress, as many Democrats wake up to the fact that the party almost never keeps its promises and is mainly engaged in raising money for itself and maintaining its increasingly tenuous grip on power.

The North Carolina Green Party had its petition to be recognized as an official party in state elections denied, in a 3-2 party-line vote, at the N.C. State Board of Elections on June 30. But the NCGP is crying foul, alleging the Elias Law Group — a powerful firm used by national Democrats, which was also successful in getting North Carolina’s election maps thrown out — used lying, bullying, and harassment to influence the decision.matt

The Green Party of New York gubernatorial ticket expressed its outrage today at the ballot access process for independent candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor in New York.

On Monday, June 27, the state Board of Elections ruled as invalid the independent nominating petitions of the Green Party and all four other gubernatorial candidates who are not already on the ballot as the Democratic and Republican candidates on the grounds of insufficient signatures. The other petitions were for the Libertarian, Unite, Freedom, and New Visions candidates.

Raleigh, NC —  Today Matthew Hoh, presumptive North Carolina Green Party nominee for US Senate, blasted the decision by the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBOE) to deny the Green Party’s ballot access petition.

“The NC State Board of Elections decision to deny the Green Party our rightfully earned place on the ballot is a corrupt, lawless, and blatantly partisan attack on democracy,” said Matthew Hoh. “It’s a slap in the face to the thousands of people who signed, to our grassroots organizers who worked tirelessly to collect thousands of signatures during an ongoing pandemic, and to everyone who believes in democracy itself.”

The State Board of Elections will meet later this week to determine whether to grant the North Carolina Green Party official recognition, a decision that could have significant implications for a closely watched U.S. Senate race.

Certification from the state board would enable registered North Carolina voters to affiliate with the Greens and it would allow Matthew Hoh to add his name to the ballot for this year's U.S. Senate race, a seat opened up by Republican Richard Burr's pending retirement at the end of what is his third term.

The North Carolina Green Party has received information that an organized Democratic Party group has the list of persons who signed the 2022 Green Party ballot access petition, and Democrats are phoning the signers and asking them to retract their signatures. It is too late for the Green Party to be adding any new signers. The counties have already checked the signatures and the Green Party has enough valid signatures. There is no provision in the North Carolina election code for signers to retract their signatures from a party petition.

The Democrats have challenged all the independent petitions for Governor after ramming through changes to the law to make it largely impossible for independent third parties to get on the ballot for statewide office. Howie Hawkins, the Green Party nominee for Governor, discusses the Democrats' ongoing efforts to suppress electoral challenges in New York.