PITTSBORO, NC – The North Carolina Green Party (NCGP) sees today’s certification of our party by the North Carolina State Board of Elections as vindication for our organization and for the over 22,000 residents who signed our petition for more voter choice in this state. The decision is a reversal of the July 1, 2022, decision by the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) in a party-line vote of 3-2 to reject the NCGP’s petition for “new party status” and with it the ballot access required to run Green candidates.

The news is in. After a contentious series of meetings and actions, and ongoing legal wrangling, Damon Circosta, Chair of the State Board of Elections, spoke today. “I move that the State Board of Elections recognizes that the North Carolina Green Party has submitted sufficient petitioners to become a political party in the state.”

Today, county and state investigations proved the Green Party’s petition to be recognised as a North Carolina political party was lawful. Board of Elections investigators submitted their findings before the State Board of Elections, asserting that wild accusations of rampant fraud were not, in fact, true. The Green Party needed 13,865 verified signatures of NC voters, and as of Aug 1, 2022, 15,472 signatures were both reviewed and validated by county boards and the state.

The Democrats’ scandalous campaign to purge Green Party candidate Matthew Hoh from the U.S. Senate ballot in North Carolina has attracted national attention. Now, Matthew and the North Carolina Green Party are fighting back and need your support, so make sure to spread the word and keep this battle in the spotlight!

We know the two corporate parties work to suppress Green candidates across the country, and we have requests from three more states who need immediate help. First up is Pennsylvania:

A lawsuit challenging the North Carolina State Board of Elections decision to exclude the North Carolina Green Party from the November ballot alleges collaboration with the governor’s office.

Democrats on the state board outvoted Republicans 3-2 in late June to exclude the North Carolina Green Party from the midterm ballot over "questions" about signatures verified by county boards of elections, despite the party submitting 2,000 signatures above the required threshold, The Carolina Journal reports.

“The hardest thing I’ve ever seen the Democrats fight for is to keep a disabled Marine combat veteran off the ballot.”

– Matthew Hoh, Green Party candidate for U.S. Senator in North Carolina

The last week of June 2022 brought more strikes against an American democracy already in deep crisis. Democrats blocked access to the ballot for the Green Party of North Carolina and seven independent gubernatorial tickets in New York.

Briahna Joy Gray hosts Matthew Hoh and Jill Stein to talk about the North Carolina Green Party’s fight with the Democratic Party and Democratic-controlled North Carolina State Board of Elections over the board’s denial of ballot access to the Greens.

North Carolina Senate candidate Matthew Hoh is enduring an all out attack from the Democratic Party to get him off the ballot. Why? Because he's running as a Green Party candidate. He got more than enough signatures, but the state won't certify them. 

Raleigh, NC – On Wednesday, Green Party Senate candidate Matthew Hoh and fellow plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the North Carolina State Board of Elections, which denied the North Carolina Green Party's petition for ballot access in a 3-2 vote. The NCGP submitted 2,000-plus verified signatures more than required by law, and the denial of this legitimate petition left the campaign and supporters stunned and outraged.

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina by lead attorney Oliver Hall of the Center for Competitive Democracy, with other plaintiffs including the NC Green Party and Matthew Hoh campaign supporters who circulated or signed the petition.

• Political analysts expect more of these sorts of challenges aimed at keeping third parties off ballots — especially in places where the races are tight.

Democratic Party activists fretting about potential Republican strength in North Carolina, a state considered to be leaning red for the midterm elections, are mounting an aggressive campaign to keep the left-leaning Green Party off the ballot there to avoid diluting Democratic turnout.

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.