Dear colleagues:
I hope all is well with you. I am writing in my capacity as the
2008 petition drive coordinator for the Libertarian Party of Virginia
to provide you with an update concerning the presidential petition
drive, and to request some information from you.
I am pleased to report that we are nearing the conclusion of the
petition drive. I conducted the initial submission of petitions to
the State Board of Elections (SBE) in Richmond on July 1. I received
word the following week that the initial submission contained nearly
8,000 valid signatures (out of the roughly 10,500 signatures
submitted). I was also informed that the LPVa had satisfied the
distribution requirement (submission of at least 400 valid signatures
from each of the eleven congressional districts in Virginia) in all
districts except the Sixth, Ninth, and Eleventh districts.
Since that time, I have received several hundred signatures from
various LPVa members. I am planning to conduct the second submission
of signatures to the SBE on or about July 29; if all goes well, this
will be the last submission that will be necessary. (Should an
additional submission be necessary, it is very likely that the
submission will require relatively few signatures.)
Allow me to request the following from you:
1) Please let me know as soon as possible whether you have any
petition signatures in your possession. If you have such signatures,
please let me know how many signatures you hold and (to the best of
your ability) the number of signatures you have from each
congressional district. (If you don't know the congressional
district, you are welcome to indicate how many signatures are from
each county and/or city.)
Note: If you have already mailed signatures to me since the end of
June, please contact me to confirm that you sent the signatures, and
to indicate roughly when you did so.
2) Please have your petition forms notarized and mail them as soon as
possible to me at the following address:
PO Box 274
Free Union, VA 22940
I need to receive these petition forms no later than July 28;
thus, please do not delay in sending all the signatures you have in
your possession. Any signatures that you fail to submit to me at this
time are unlikely to be submitted to the SBE, and thus will represent
wasted effort (at least in some measure). Prior to the initial
submission, some members chose not to convey to me all of the
signatures they had gathered so far. I suspect this decision was
based upon the reasonable notion that a second submission would
probably be necessary, and that such members preferred to retain their
petition forms for use between the dates of the initial submission and
the second submission. In any event, if you have any signatures in
your possession, now is the time to have your petition forms notarized
and sent to me.
Before mailing the signatures, please let me know how many
signatures you are sending, and indicate the means by which the
signatures will be mailed. For example, if you are planning to send
the signatures via registered mail, please let me know this. (It would
be best to mail the signatures in a manner that allows the mailing to
be tracked in case the mailing doesn't reach me.) If you have the
opportunity, it is not a bad idea as an added safety measure to make a
photocopy of each petition sheet you send me.
3) While I do not believe it will be necessary for you to gather
additional signatures after you submit your current holdings to me, it
would be helpful for me to know whether are you willing and able to
gather petition signatures if necessary during the first two weeks of
August. (Such petitioning would only be necessary if something
extraordinary were to occur, such as several hundred signatures being
lost or destroyed while in transit.)
4) Please let me know whether any festivals, concerts, or other large
gatherings of people will take place in your area during the next four
weeks at which we can gather signatures. Again, I consider it very
unlikely that we shall need to petition at such events; however, it is
best to be prepared in case of low-probability problems. Moreover,
information about such events will be useful in determining the
allocation of resources for outreach activities by the LPVa, the
Barr/Root campaign, and the Redpath campaign.
5) As a reminder, please do not alter the petition form in any manner
to reflect the fact that the LP presidential ticket consists of Mr.
Barr and Mr. Root. As I have mentioned previously, we need to submit
petitions signatures on forms that feature the names of Mr. Nolan and
Mr. Bergland (the "placeholder" names that appear on the petition).
Unless something extraordinary occurs, if our petition drive is
successful, the names of Mr. Barr and Mr. Root will be on the Virginia
ballot this fall due to the fact that Virginia allows substitution
concerning presidential and vice presidential petitions.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or
comments about the petition process. You are welcome to contact me via
e-mail or to call me at (434) 973-5958. Please note that information
about the petition process is available on the LPVa website at
www.lpva.com/HTML/2008petitionDrive.php.
Please join me in thanking the following people for their fine
work with the petition drive (listed in alphabetical order of
surname): Kim Becker, Sanford Pankin, and Bill Redpath. Each person
listed has submitted at least 100 signatures to me on a volunteer
basis. Indeed, each person has gathered over 150 signatures for the
petition drive, with Mr. Redpath gathering over 1,200 signatures.
(Andy Akers, Anne Panella, and Joe Rudmin deserve honorable mention
for their contribution of signatures.) In addition, please thank
Chuck Eby and Doug Wright (former and current LPVa webmasters,
respectively) for their work to prepare and maintain the petition
drive webpage.
Thanks for your work for liberty, and for your help with the
petition drive. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Take care,
Jim
James W. Lark, III
Coordinator, 2008 Petition Drive, Libertarian Party of Virginia
Vice Chairman, Libertarian Party of Virginia
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Libertarian Party of Virginia
http://www.LPVA.com
Phone: 703-715-6230
