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For the fourth consecutive election cycle, the Libertarian Party of Arkansas has been declared a "new political party."

Secretary of State Mark Martin's office certified in a letter Monday that the party collected enough valid signatures to qualify for ballot access statewide.

The state Libertarian Party has never met a threshold set in Arkansas law to automatically retain ballot access -- as have the state Republican and Democratic parties -- and avoid a petition process.

Michael Pakko, chair of the Libertarian Party of Arkansas, would like to see the state's process change.

"As far as ballot access goes, we really haven't made much progress there," he said. "I think the weakest part of the whole system of ballot access is it's limited to one single office. If you don't get 3 percent of the vote at the top of the ticket, then you're not a political party."

In Arkansas, a party needs to obtain 3 percent of the total votes cast for the office of governor or nominees for presidential electors at the first general election after certification to retain ballot access.

In 2016, the party's candidate, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, received 2.6 percent of the vote in Arkansas. In 2012, he received 1.5 percent of the vote.

So last month, the party submitted more than 15,000 signatures to the secretary of state's office to become a "new political party." The office's certification means that at least 10,000 were valid -- the requirement for starting any new political party.

Pakko said collecting the signatures through paid canvassers cost about $30,000 this year.

Nationally, the Libertarian party now has ballot access in 38 states. Among states bordering Arkansas, the party currently lacks access only in Tennessee, according to the national party's website.

Pakko said the national party had automatic ballot access in 35 states immediately after the 2016 election, but it failed to meet various requirements in 15 others, including Arkansas.

Libertarians won recognition as an official Arkansas political party for the first time in 2011 after collecting more than 16,000 signatures.

Now that the party is certified, Pakko said its attention will shift to recruiting candidates. The party plans to hold a convention in late February.

"We are a party that believes in limited government, that individuals should have the right to live their lives the way they see fit without interference of government -- so long as you're not imposing on someone else," Pakko said. "It's a very live-and-let-live approach to government. If people believe in that kind of outlook, well, we welcome them to join the Libertarian party."

Mark West, a pastor in Batesville, announced last month that he is running for governor as a Libertarian next year.

Information for this article was contributed by Michael R. Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Metro on 07/12/2017

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Libertarians earn spots on '18 ballot, urge better access - Arkansas Online

SHERIDAN, Ind (WANE) Soon, Democrats and Republicans will review Indianas liquor laws, but theyre not the only political parties debating cold beer sales.

This weekend, a drink-in will be held at a Rickers gas station. A few weeks ago, the local Libertarian party held an event at the Columbus gas station.

This time, its the state party going to the Rickers in Sheridan. Those two stores caused an uproar during the 2017 legislative session.

The owner obtained a liquor license that allowed each location to sell cold beer carryout. Right now, Indianas law only allows restaurants, and liquor stores to do so.

Rickers got around the law by selling made to order food. We caught up with the Libertarian party chair Tuesday. A drink-in he said is a unique event that he hopes will help his party, and get Indianas alcohol law changed.

That was not on the top of my lists of something that we would be doing, but its a fun event, Indiana Libertarian Party Chair Tim McGuire said. Its a little tongue and cheek. Were excited to be doing it.

If youre interested in attending, the drink-in takes place at the Rickers Sheridan site, Sunday at 3 p.m. Libertarian Party members will stick around for a couple hours.

In a Facebook event, the party said the drink-in will essentially be a rally for change.

The Indiana Legislature is preventing your freedom to choose and protecting classes of businesses through legislation. Come to Sheridan, Indiana to show your support for your right to choose and fair business legislations. We will also be supporting the rights of Rickers Stores to be able to not only sell cold beer but sell it on Sundays as well.

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Indiana Libertarians holding 'drink-in' to promote liquor law changes ... - WANE

Recently, talk show personality Dave Rubin came out against his fellow progressives, claiming that he no longer identifies with them, saying that, Defending my liberal values has suddenly become a conservative position.

Rubin claims that the left doesnt believe in free speech or tolerance anymorethat the left has left him; but thats not a bug in leftism, its a featurea founding feature.

When the terms left and right first came about to identify political positions, they represented the sides in the French National Assembly. Those who supported the king sat on his right and those who supported the revolution sat on his left. Since its inception, the left has been about rebellion against the status quo.

Rebellion is fine if the status quo is tyrannical, but its a problem if the status quo is amazing.

Revolution was necessary to help civilization progress toward classically liberal ideals, but a political faction that identifies primarily with revolution will end up revolting from itself, which is what were seeing today in the most dramatic and rapid inversion of ideology that has ever been witnessed.

The left used to think that people should be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. Now its the direct opposite.

The left used to promote scientific inquiry. Now they ridicule people who dare inquire incorrectly.

They used to be against segregation but now demand it.

They used to preach open-mindedness. Now the only thing thats open is their mouths.

The left used to believe in tolerance, freedom, and civil rights. Now it is the most intolerant, anti-freedom, and anti-civil rights political faction on Earth.

Its no coincidence that the epicenter of this implosion of logic is the modern American university system; where the students are veterans of the participation-trophy purgatory that is elementary and secondary education across the country.

Economically, they havent earned anything, not to mention they enjoy the absolute lap of luxury that is American college life.

An increasing number of students in these monuments of Western wealth are there not because of extraordinary achievement but because of the color of their skin, and these are the people who have the audacity to complain about someone elses privilege?

Their rebellious predecessors in the 1960s at least protested actual evils in the world. They fought against the governments drafting people into unjust wars and releasing police dogs on innocent people because they werent the right skin color.

Todays crybabies, however, throw shrieking, public, temper tantrums because they got their feelings hurt.

Sometimes, when no ones feelings got hurt, the professional complainers had to hurt their own feelings. This was the case when a racist note directed at a Minnesota college student sparked protests before it was discovered the note was fake.

A violent hate crime against a Muslim in Louisiana was also found to be completely fabricated.

Another hate crime against a North Dakota gay man was shown to be a hoax too.

It would seem that there are more fake hate crimes than actual hate crimes in this bizarre Twilight Zone episode called America.

But thats what happens when your socio-political ideology demands that you protest and theres nothing left to protest.

This is the state of rebellion in the age of awesome.

Eventually, if these overgrown toddlers dont destroy the system that gives them their privilege to destroy it, they will destroy themselves.

As a pop song once put it, When theres nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.

You already see it happening in the insanity of the social justice Hunger Games that pit various leftist groups against each other in a race to see whos the most oppressed. This is what happened when Black Lives Matter protesters shut down a pride parade in Toronto, claiming Pride Toronto had engaged in anti-Black racism by reducing the visibility of gay people of color in the march.

This was the case when paleo-leftist professors at Yale were run out of town by neo-leftist students for not being leftist enough.

In a shocking exchange, students demanded an apology from their faculty-in-residence Nicholas Christakis for hurting their feelings. He eventually did exactly what they wanted and apologized, but he didnt apologize hard enough evidently he was gone six months later.

That burlesque was recently upstaged by the witch-hunt at Evergreen State College in Washington, where students disrupted one self-professed deeply progressive professors class, surrounded him, cursed at him, screamed at him, called him a racist, and protested for him to resign or be fired.

What evil did this professor commit? Not going along with a day of race-based segregation that another professor had organized.

The quintessential case though, is Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who claims to be black using the same arguments that transgendered people use to claim to be another sex.

For some reason, this is heresy to the cultural Marxists and when Hypatia, a Journal of Feminist Philosophy, published a Defense of Transracialism, the claws and the explosive-tipped arrows came out.

Basically, women, though oppressed in their own right, arent oppressed enough to have an opinion about race or trans issues if theyre white and cis-gendered.

Evidently, you have to have at least two badges of oppression to really be oppressed nowadays.

No wonder reasonable people like Dave Rubin are speaking out against the left. They realize that revolution is just a means, albeit a necessary one at times. It is not an end.

What were seeing in the left today is the inevitable self-destruction of an ideology predicated on the means of revolution. It cannot last. It will not last. All we can do is pray that the tornado of illogical self-destruction doesnt take the entire civilization down with it.

This post was written by JSB Morse.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

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The Inescapable Self-Destruction of the Left - Being Libertarian

PHOENIX -- A federal judge has rebuffed a bid by the Libertarian Party to kill an Arizona law even its sponsors concede was designed to make it harder for minor party candidates to get on the general election ballot.

Judge David Campbell acknowledged Monday the 2015 law sharply increases the number of signatures that Libertarian candidates need to qualify for ballot status. In some cases, the difference is more than 20 times the old requirement.

The result was that only one Libertarian candidate qualified for the ballot in 2016, and none made it to the general election. By contrast, there were 25 in 2004, 19 in 2008 and 18 in 2012.

But Campbell said the new hurdle is not unconstitutionally burdensome. And the judge accepted the arguments that the higher signature requirements ensure that candidates who reach the November ballot have some threshold of support.

But Libertarian Party Chairman Michael Kielsky said the judge ignored not just the higher burden but the games that the Republican-controlled legislature played in making 2015 the change for their own political purposes.

The Republicans set out to get the Libertarians off the ballot and the Republicans succeeded, Kielsky said. And now, Judge Campbell has said, Thats OK.

Kielsky is not just spouting party rhetoric.

In pushing for the change, GOP lawmakers made no secret they do not want Libertarian Party candidates in the race, contending that a vote for a Libertarian is a vote that would otherwise go to a Republican. As proof, some cited the 2012 congressional race.

Republican Jonathan Paton lost the CD 1 race to Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick by 9,180 votes. But Libertarian Kim Allen picked up 15,227 votes -- votes that Rep. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, argued during floor debate likely would have gone to Paton.

And in CD 9, Democrats Kyrsten Sinema defeated Republican Vernon Parker by 10,251 votes, with Libertarian Powell Gammill tallying 16,620.

And if the point was lost, Mesnard made the issue more personal for colleagues, warning them that they, too, could find themselves aced out of a seat if they dont change the signature requirements.

I cant believe we wouldnt see the benefit of this, he said during a floor speech.

The way the legislature accomplished this was to change the rules.

Prior to 2015, would-be candidates qualified for the ballot by getting the signatures of one-half of one percent of all party members within a given area. So for a Republican seeking statewide office, that translated out to 5,660 signatures.

The new formula changed that to one-quarter of a percent -- but for all people who could sign a candidates petition. That adds political independents, who outnumber Democrats and are running neck-in-neck with Republicans, to the equation.

Under the new formula, a Republican statewide candidate in 2016 needed 5,790 signatures.

But the effect on minor parties is more profound,

Using that pre-2016 formula, a Libertarian could run for statewide office with petitions bearing just 134 names, one-half percent of all those registered with the party. But the new formula, which takes into account all the independents, required a Libertarian trying to get on a statewide ballot to get 3,023 signatures.

To put that in perspective that is closed to 12 percent of all registered Libertarians. By contrast, the statewide burden for a GOP candidate, based on the number of registered Republicans, remains close to that one-half of one percent of all adherents.

Its B.S., Kielsky said. Its completely perverse.

But Campbell said there is nothing unconstitutional about the higher requirement to limit the field to bona fide candidates who had some chance of actually winning.

If a candidate was not required to show any threshold of support through votes or petition signatures, she could win her primary and reach the general ballot with no significant modicum of support at all, Campbell continued. And in the case of Libertarians, who often run unopposed in their partys primary, a candidate could win a spot on the general election ballot with only one vote in such a primary.

Anyway, the judge said, Libertarian candidates can now seek out support to get on the ballot from independents, a pool totaling more than one million voters in Arizona.

Kielsky said that misses the point.

That means we have to appeal to things that the independents care about -- but not necessarily the Libertarians care about -- to be a Libertarian candidate, he said. The distinction of being a Libertarian is diluted, if not lost.

And Kielsky called the requirement for a modicum of support a red herring. He said if Libertarians were not picking up significant votes, the GOP-controlled legislature would not have changed the law to keep them off the ballot.

On Twitter: @azcapmedia

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Judge upholds law stifling Libertarian ballot presence - Verde Independent

Its not surprising that the number of registered Democrats in the state of Louisiana has decreased over the past 16 years. A new analysis from JMC Analytics shows that there has been a significant decrease in the number of registered white Democrats while the number of registered white Republicans has risen.

In 2001, when President George W. Bush took office, white Democrats made up 35% of the registered voters, but today that number has fallen to 18%. Over the same period, the number of Republicans increased from 22% to 30% and Independents increased 8%.

From 2001 to today, black voters in the state rose from 29% to 31%, but Hispanic and Asian voters, combined, increased 66%.

Today, Democrats account for 44% of the voters in the state of Louisiana, while Republicans account for 30% and Independents 26%.

But how many registered Republicans and Democrats are true Republicans or Democrats? There are Democrats that oppose new gun control legislation and Republican that support same-sex marriage. Does support for gun rights define a voter as a Repubican? Does support of same-sex marriage render a voter a Democrat?

The world of political issues is complicated and seemingly not as clear cut as it was in the past. Hypocrisy reins supreme with both Democrats and Republicans. Perhaps the Independents are more respected for having views that seem to conflict with the strict Republican and Democratic Party ideology.

Many people find security in belonging to a group that helps define who they are. Many how identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats do not agree with the strict definition of what it means to be Republican or Democrat, but they gain a stronger sense of identity by adhering allegiance to one party or the other.

The majority of voters in the state of Louisiana, as well as the majority of voters across America, are not truly Republican or Democrat. And these are the voters that decide the outcome of elections.

Look at the breakdown of registered voters in Louisiana 44% are Democrats, 30% are Republicans and 26% are Independents. Based on the breakdown of voters, in a two-candidate race, a Republican or a Democrat would need the support of Independents to win an election.

During the campaign, Donald Trumps appeal stretched beyond the base of the Republican Party. Now as president, Trump appears to be pandering more to his base, which will not be strong enough for reelection in 2020.

On my radio show, I have always emphasized the importance of a candidate projecting an image more moderate than the core of either party. George W. Bush brilliantly used the slogan, Compassionate Conservative to win. Barack Obama presented a more moderate, or populist, position during his two campaigns. Once in office, candidates tend to feed their base voters. That changes toward reelection time. There are those who will vote for the Republican or the Democrat no matter what circumstances surround a campaign, but it is the moderates and the Independents that determine an elections outcome.

In a world where Americans are so quick to label each other -conservative, liberal or whatever - we should all be honest about the reality that most are not as politically pure as the image of either party.

And thats the reason we should not be so quick to label or judge each other.

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Scoot: Are you Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian? - WWL First News (blog)