Originally published on North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections, November 5th, 2008. Republished with permission.Dear Concerned North Carolinians:The 2008 election of November fourth has brought North Carolina several good turnouts. First, Republican State Senator Jim Jacumin, who has expressed his desire to push for free and fair elections and has promised to introduce legislation in the NC General Assembly to do such, won his re-election bid with just under 58% of the vote. The NCFPE will be working with Senator Jacumin as closely as possible to ensure a bill to alleviate the ballot problem is introduced, yet, we assure you that we cannot do this alone. We will need the support and help of the citizen's of North Carolina to make sure our message is heard and acted upon in the NC General Assembly.
So be sure to keep checking back at the NCFPE website for updates on the future bill in the NC General Assembly.Second, the North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections would like to applaud all of the Libertarian candidates who ran for election this year, and
we especially applaud Mike Munger, Libertarian candidate for Governor, who was able to garner 2.87% of the vote (120,890 votes) for Governor and in the mean time guaranteed the Libertarian Party of North Carolina ballot access for 2010 and 2012. His achievement is a great one, that will allow the Libertarian Party of NC to run more effective campaigns in the future by being able to focus their funds on campaigning instead of ballot access. Again, we congratulate the Libertarian Party of North Carolina in their success.
Now that the elections are over,
please do not put politics aside and return to life as normal, but rather keep in mind the struggles that third political parties and unaffiliated candidates in North Carolina have ahead of them now, and find ways to help out. With voter turnout for the 2008 elections overall being one of the highest for the state in twenty four years (over 68%), ballot access for third parties and unaffiliated candidates in North Carolina is going to be difficult with our current laws.
New political parties will now have to obtain at least 84,430 signatures to simply qualify their party for the ballot, this is over 14,500 signatures more than was required for ballot access in 2008. It is also important to note that these numbers do not include the extra signatures a party will need due to the signatures that the state throws out, meaning that for a new political party to obtain ballot access in 2010 or 2012, they will most likely have to obtain around 121,000 signatures total. So please, keep the problem of ballot access on your mind and make sure that your newly elected representatives in the NC House of Representatives and NC Senate know where you stand on ballot access.
Let's make alleviated ballot access and truly free and fair elections an issue that the North Carolina General Assembly cannot ignore any longer.
For Liberty's Sake,
Jordon M. GreenePresident, North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections
*Statistics given above are based on unofficial election results from the NC State Board of Elections web site as of 1:20 AM on 11-05-2008.For more information on the ballot access issue, some interesting history of ballot access laws in North Caroina, and NCFPE-PAC's draft of a bill to address the ballot access problem, check out the
NCFPE website.

Labels: ballot access