Shamefully, in New York it is the case that we are the only State, Commonwealth, or Territory of the United States to have only two candidates for President on the ballot. This is a result of changes to our electoral laws spearheaded by the so-called “Democratic” Party, in which ballot access for independent candidates was made nearly impossible by *tripling* the number of voters’ signatures that are required, and by establishing an unreasonably compressed time frame in which to collect these signatures. 

Tompkins Weekly
By Bill Carini
October 16, 2024

Nationwide, the Democrats and Republicans have launched a blizzard of lawsuits and electoral laws designed to frustrate democracy. In the case of the Republicans, these are primarily efforts to keep certain categories of voters off of the registration rolls. In the case of the Democrats, these are primarily efforts to keep voters from having more options on the ballot.

The Green Party and the Jill Stein campaign are not funded by corporations, billionaires, and their shadowy super PACs; we are a grassroots movement.

When the Democrats, using their gargantuan resources, go to court to try to keep us off ballots, even their most spurious and unsuccessful lawsuits drain our relatively much smaller bank accounts. An additional underhanded tactic deployed by the Biden-Harris regime, and its Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, was to withhold from Jill’s campaign the public matching funds that the FEC certified that she had qualified for: an outrage against each and every one of us who checked “Give $3 to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund”. These sleazy attacks significantly hampered our ballot access activities.

Despite the challenges of frequently unfair election laws and Democrat lawsuits, Jill is on the ballot in 39 states, and is a recognized write-in candidate in 7 additional states. These 46 states represent over 500 votes in the electoral college (270 needed to win). Jill Stein and her running mate Rudolph Ware have registered as a recognized write-in candidate in New York.

Votes for Jill *will* be counted. This is how we assert our demand for a true democracy. This is how we fight back against authoritarianism. This is how we end our history of war crimes. This is our leverage.

If Jill can get at least 130,000 votes in New York, the Green Party will break through the democracy barrier and have ballot access in the state for the next 2 years. But we must aim for much more. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are competing to be the most cringingly servile lackey of the genocidal, apartheid Israeli government. This places them to the right of Ronald Reagan, who brought Israel to heel in 1982 when it was committing a “Holocaust” (his word) in Lebanon. They are competing to be the most eager proponent of fracking and expanded fossil fuel extraction. They are competing to spend more and more of our tax dollars on “lethality” instead of our own vital needs. To vote for either one of them is to violate our conscience, our values, our survival. Jill’s platform is everything that the majority of us could wish for. (www.jillstein2024.com/platform). Most of us know by now that Dr. Jill Stein is the only presidential candidate that we can count on to be antiwar, pro-climate, pro-We the People.

A wasted vote is a vote for the Democratic or Republican candidates, who correctly have surmised that they are immune to public opinion, because up to now most voters feel compelled to choose one or the other. They have thrust the world into chaos, even to the brink of nuclear annihilation and climate catastrophe. They have created our homelessness crisis with their devotion to finance capital, our health crises with their devotion to the rapacious insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

A vote for the Green Party candidate is a vote for a future in which we can survive and thrive. It is a constructive vote, a building block of a movement for positive change.

To vote for Jill Stein and Rudolph Ware for President and Vice President on our ballot, fill in the bubble for a Write-in vote, and write “Jill Stein/Rudolph Ware” in the box provided.

Bill Carini is a manual laborer and a member of the Green Party. He can be reached at [email protected].