A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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October 16, 20053rd Party ConferenceI attended a portion of the 3rd Party National Conference in Merrimack, New Hampshire this weekend. The conference brought together a number of minor parties which might disagree on policy, but share common interests in terms of ballot access and voting rights. The conference was organized by Daniel Vovak, whose own challenge to Barack Obama and Alan Keyes for the U.S. Senate in Illinous was unsuccessful. Friday's sessions were covered by the Nashua Telegraph, and featured a speaker from the Green Party. Saturday morning, I listened to the chairman of the American Patriot Party denounce corruption in Washington, and the legitimacy of the Federal Reserve System. At lunch, I chatted with a representative of the New York Constitution Party, which among other things would like to abolish the income tax. There was also a large contingent from the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire.  Jesse Johnson I wasn't expecting to be impressed by anyone among these fringe parties, but I was. Jesse Johnson, the 2004 candidate for governor of the West Virginia Mountain Party is a charismatic speaker with a rich voice. A West Virgina native, he worked in the film industry for many years, both as an actor and with film crews. The Mountain Party was formed as a left-of-center party focused on protecting West Virginia's environment. "After having been a Republican for 26 years, I switched to the Mountain Party," Johnson said. "I brought them more to the center than they had ever been." Johnson's 2.5% of the vote was pretty respectable as third party candidates go. The luncheon speaker was Bev Harris, of blackboxvoting.org, speaking to an audience of 30 about the problems of electronic voting machines. While Harris apparently has a history of getting into spats with former allies (here and here), she seemed quite knowledgeable and professional in her talk. She warned that the boom in voting machine procurement following the passage of the Help America Vote Act created an environment where vendors may employ corrupt practices in order to win contracts. Without alleging that vote fraud had occurred, she said that electronic voting machines without paper audit trails were ripe for abuse. The possibility of such fraud has been an obsession of liberal groups like MoveOn. But members of the audience who belonged to right-of-center parties expressed their full agreement with her concerns. Harris isn't wild about a printer add-on to electronic touch-screen machines either. She fears that many voters won't bother to check the printout. Instead, she favors optically-scanned paper ballots which voters fill out on their own. Posted by rickheller at October 16, 2005 09:02 PMComments
Great post, Rick! I'm kinda depressed now that I hadn't heard of this conference earlier, as I was just in Nashua about a week ago and live close enough that I could have found time to drop by this last weekend. From your post, the conference sounded quite informative. Just curious, how did you learn of this conference, and was it open to the general public? I think these types of conferences are great opportunities for centrists and third party members to share ideas and try to find common ground. Granted, third parties represent a vast diversity of opinion, and various groups are probably at odds with one another on many issues (I can't imagine Greens agreeing with members of the Constitution Party on very many issues). On the other hand, as you mentioned, all third parties suffer from the endless hurdles posed by ballot access laws--laws that the Republicans and Democrats have imposed on our country to insure that we're stuck with a two-party system. Posted by: nicrivera at October 17, 2005 12:41 AMOK, so you can ignore my second question, as the third party conference website pretty much answers that question. $25 for a basic pass is a rather modest cost for your typical political conference nowadays, but at the same time, you'd think that third parties would be so eager to get the word about about their organizations that they'd be willing to charge a more nominal amount (say 5 or 6 dollars) or at least make a portion of the conference open to the general public for free. I heard about it from PRNewswire, from which I sometimes get emails. Now, I'm sorry I didn't post an announcement about the event beforehand, so you could have gone. Regarding the admission price, 3rd parties don't have much money to fund conferences on their own, so it had to be at least in part supported by attendees. Posted by: rickheller at October 17, 2005 11:24 AMExcellent article. The keynote speaker for the dinner, Dr. Paul Barresi, a lawyer and the Chairman of the Political Science Department of Southern New Hampshire University, confirmed that our event was historical. No group with that many political parties has ever met, aside from perhaps a group when our country was established, though their political parties were not known as such. Dr. Barresi would likely be a good source for a follow-up article. Posted by: Daniel R. Vovak at October 17, 2005 03:28 PMGreat Ghu, but the spammers are getting quicker! Posted by: Tully at October 17, 2005 06:59 PMI removed the spam. That is nasty when they do it to an active thread. Posted by: rickheller at October 17, 2005 09:23 PMI had to clear two of my threads--including the one asking for posters to watch out for sp*m.... This round came from an Eastern European serrver, but they're doing their thing for a domain registered in Seattle. Posted by: Tully at October 17, 2005 10:04 PMRick; It was pouring rain, so the helicopters were grounded. Posted by: rickheller at October 18, 2005 09:07 AM |
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