State Election Board Rules that Hawkins has enough signatures to get on the ballot
Howie Hawkins for Congress
Media Release
For Release: September 12
For More Info: Howie Hawkins 315 425-1019
At a hearing today at the New York State Board of Elections, the nomination petition of Howie Hawkins as the Green Populist candidate for Congress in the 25th Congressional District was upheld.
Bob Brim, the hearing officer for the Board, ruled that Hawkins had 4,141 valid signatures, well in excess of the 3,500 needed.
"Now I can refocus on speaking to the issues and talking to the voters," said Hawkins. "It wasn't even close. What a waste of time."
Hawkins said that the legal games played by the two major parties to block alternative candidates from the ballot highlight the need for election reform.
"We need fair ballot access laws, rather than the present system designed to protect career politicians. Voters, not high-priced lawyers, should decide who gets to represent them. We need verifiable voting systems to make sure that every vote is counted unlike in recent Presidential elections. We need to scrap the electoral College and allow voters to directly elect the President. We also need to make it easier for everyone to vote, such as going to same day voter registration as other states do. Much of the challenges was merely about whether a particular voter had moved since the last election. No wonder that the US has voter turnout much lower than the rest of the world's democracy," said Hawkins.
Hawkins said the US should adopt other reforms widely used in other countries. Only three democracies still use the winner-take-all election system used by the US, instead doing proportional representation. This means that the number of seats in representative bodies such as City Council or state and national legislatures are determined by the percentage of each vote the party represents. This means that every vote counts - since the number of seats change with every few percentage points - so voter participation is much higher than in the US.
"At a minimum, we should use preferential voting, where voters rank all the candidates at the ballot box in their order of preference. If no candidate gets a majority on the first round, then the lowest ranked candidates are removed in the next round and their voters' number 2 choices are counted. This ensures whomever wins has the broadest base of support among the voters - no more candidates elected by a minority of the voters. It would also eliminate the huge problem we have in America, especially in Presidential elections, were people don't vote for whom they want to win but instead vote for the person they least dislike who has a good chance of winning. People shouldn't be forced to vote for the lesser of two evils," stated Hawkins.
Hawkins said the he supported DC statehood, so that Washington DC had representation in Congress.
The Democrats challenging Hawkins petition were represented at the hearing by Frank Hoare, former Executive Director of the State Democratic Party and long time counsel to Assembly Ways and Means Chair Denny Farrell. The Democrats could still choose to go to court to try to knock off the petition.
Hawkins was represented at the hearing by local attorney Michael F. Donnelly.
"If the Democrats spent as much energy challenging President Bush as they did the petitions of progressive third party candidates, we would see a whole lot more progress on ending the war in Iraq, halting climate change and providing health care to all Americans," noted Mark Dunlea, an attorney and former Chair of the Green Party of NYS who is assisting Hawkins.
A number of top democratic leaders were recently indicted in Pennsylvania partially for using state resources to file challenges against the petitions of Green Party candidates and independent Ralph Nader.
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