ATTENTION ALL LPVA MEMBERS The LPVA presidential petition drive is suspended until at least Wednesday, April 18, 2012. Here is the situation. The petition that has been circulating has one elector for each congressional district and two at-large electors. The electors were selected from each congressional district based on the old (before this years redistricting) congressional district boundaries. We did not know when the congressional redistricting process would be completed this year, and we needed to get started on our petition drive. There was legislation to allow us to do this that passed both the Virginia House and Virginia Senate unanimously. It certainly appeared to not be controversial, and we started petitioning with electors selected from each of the congressional districts using the old boundaries. However, the Governor did not sign or veto the legislation. He sent it back to the Virginia General Assembly with suggested changes, the result of which, if implemented, would make our current petitions invalid, and we would have to start over with new petitions. However, the General Assembly can ignore the Governors recommendations, and if they do, the bill will become law, which is what we want to have happen. The Governors recommendations will be considered by the General Assembly on Wednesday, April 18. Please contact your Virginia Delegate and State Senator to ask them to reject the Governors recommendations on HB 1151. You can find out who your legislators are by going to:
http://conview.state.va.us/whosmy.nsf/main?openform Youll know more when I know more. Thanks for your work on this, and I am sure that we will ultimately prevail in getting the Libertarian Partys Presidential ticket on the ballot in Virginia in 2012. Bill Redpath Below is the post about this from Richard Wingers ballot-access.org: <http://www.ballot-access.org/2012/04/11/virginia-governor-asks-legislature-to-amend-ballot-access-bill-so-as-not-to-apply-to-presidential-petitions/>Virginia Governor Asks Legislature to Amend Ballot Access Bill so as Not to Apply to Presidential Petitions April 11th, 2012 When Virginia Governors receive a bill from the legislature, they may sign the bill, veto the bill, or send it back to the legislature with suggested changes. When the Governor sends back a bill with suggestions, the legislature has one day to decide whether to accept the recommendation or not. If the legislature takes no action, the bill is enacted anyway; it is not vetoed. On March 2, the Virginia legislature had passed a bill to help ballot access, effective immediately. HB 1151 says that if new U.S. House district boundaries arent in place by the start of the even-numbered election year, petitions are valid that year whether they use the old U.S. House district boundaries or the new boundaries. The bill has an urgency clause so as to take effect immediately. On April 9, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell sent the bill back to the legislature with suggested changes. He wants the bill to take effect in 2013, not now. Also he does not want the provisions of the bill to apply to any petition to place minor party or independent presidential candidates on the ballot, now or in the future. The legislature will decide in a one-day session on April 18 whether to pass this recommendation. The session starts at noon and must consider gubernatorial recommendations for approximately 120 bills. Governor McDonnells suggestions for HB 1151 are shockingly unfair. The Libertarian and Green Parties had already started circulating their presidential petitions. Even though neither of these parties have presidential nominees yet, Virginia allows stand-in presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and lets such petitions start circulating on January 1 of a presidential election year. If the legislature accepts the Governors recommendations, the petitioning work already completed may be wasted. Virginia requires presidential petitions to include the candidates for presidential elector. Virginia also mandates that the petition carry the name of one candidate for elector from each U.S. House district. No one knew what the new district boundaries would be until March 14, when the U.S. Justice Department approved the new boundaries, so the minor party presidential electors were chosen based on the old districts. The State Board of Elections had been telling candidates to use old boundaries. Of course, petitioning for U.S. House candidates is also threatened by the Governors action. It is not known if there are any independent or minor party candidates for U.S. Senate this year, but if there are, and they already started petitioning, they would be injured also. U.S. Senate petitions, like presidential petitions, have a distribution requirement: 400 signatures per U.S. House district. Virginians concerned about the Governors hostile recommendation ought to quickly communicate with their state legislators, asking the legislature not to accept Governor McDonnells recommendations to HB 1151. The Governors action was intrinsically hurtful, and it was also hurtful for him to wait until the very last day to send in a recommendation. The action was not posted on the legislatures web page until the afternoon of April 10. -- end -- ############################################################# Have an announcement you'd like to post? SCC members & many committee heads are all authorized to post; or you may send your announcements to the List Master: <[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]?subject=Announcement>. ############################################################# Unsubscribe: Send an email to [email protected] with no subject and "Unsubscribe Announce" as the text. ############################################################# Libertarian Party of Virginia http://www.LPVA.com Phone: 703-715-6230 ############################################################# Want to see past messages? Check the Archive: http://www.Mail-Archive.com/[email protected]/ #############################################################
