The Libertarian Party of Ohio and the National Libertarian Party have had a really big month!
The National Convention was held in New Orleans. The National Chair, Nick Sarwark was reelected, and we have a new Vice Chair, Alex Merced and new Treasurer, Caryn Ann Harlos. The convention resulted in fundraising records being broken. Overall, this is a really encouraging way to start the next two years.
Immediately following the National Convention, both Tom Woods and Dave Smith, two very prominent liberty lovers, podcasters and public personalities, both rejoined the National Libertarian Party, which I take as a big vote of confidence in the direction we anticipate the party going. Honestly, having former Vice Chair, Arvin Vohra, out of leadership seems to have inspired quite a bit of optimism on many levels from lots of people I’ve heard from after the convention.
In more localized LP news, the Libertarian Party of Ohio recently turned in over 102,000 petition signatures to resecure ballot access for Libertarian Candidates and to be recognized officially as a political party in Ohio. The required signatures is a little over 54,000 however with the issues that we have faced against the Ohio Republican Party, we needed to be as confident as possible that we have well over the required number of valid signatures. The Secretary of State will inform the Libertarian Party of Ohio by Mid August if they find our petition sufficient or not. Assuming it is sufficient, our candidates will be on November’s ballot. To keep ballot access, our Gubernatorial candidate must secure 3% of all Gubernatorial Ballots Cast.
The Supreme Court of the US recently upheld Ohio’s Voter Purge regulations, meaning that any registered voter who hasn’t voted in a national election and fails to return an (unsolicited) voter verification contact card, is essentially de registered and can’t cast a ballot until reregistering. It’s really disheartening that this has been upheld, but I see a little bit of hope in seeing that both Republicans and Democrats as well as Independents think that this voter purge issue is wrong and unconstitutional. Some solace on this issue is that the county boards of elections have been told to take no action on purging the voter rolls until after the 2018 general elections.
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/11/618870982/supreme-court-upholds-controversial-ohio-voter-purge-law
Finally, on Independence Day, in the heart of Columbus is the DooDah Parade, which is a huge celebration of everything irreverent, and silly in politics and a celebration of Freedom of Speech. We had a couple of our current candidates as well as a group of volunteers in the parade with us and took full opportunity to poke fun at Ohio Politicians. Along the route of the parade, we had multiple people yelling out things like “yeah!” And “You’re back!” And it was encouraging to see and hear that.
I genuinely believe that there are tons of people out there that are just tired of the two party system and are really starting to wake up and question the motives of the Republican and Democratic parties. I see the role of the Libertarian Party being to find a place where all of these disenfranchised former Republicans and Democrats can find a new political “home” where many of their important issues can be heard and solutions developed.