New York blocks Jill Stein’s ballot access in presidential bid
Despite collecting 10 times more signatures than all other grassroots contenders, presidential candidate Jill Stein, who has strong support among Arab and Muslim Americans, has fallen shy of New York state’s “oppressive” ballot access requirement preventing her inclusion on the presidential election ballot. Stein has vowed to fight the exclusion in court filing a lawsuit against the restriction
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein said Thursday (May 30, 2024) that she anticipated her campaign’s ballot access petition would be rejected by the state of New York, but she vowed to continue the fight for democracy and voter choice in court.
“The heroic volunteer mobilization that collected an unprecedented 42,000 signatures in 6 weeks is a victory for the resistance to empire, oligarchy and voter suppression. And that resistance is growing stronger by the day. We’re not done with this fight against New York’s anti-democratic voter suppression designed by the Democratic Party,” Dr. Stein said.
“We will pursue all legal options available to fight for millions of voters who are hungry for a real choice and real democracy.”
“Among grassroots campaigns, we emerged as the undisputed front-runner thanks to a heroic volunteer effort, submitting more than 42,000 signatures collected in just six weeks,” said Dr. Stein.
“The Libertarian Party, which has achieved ballot access in every state in the past 2 presidential elections, was only able to submit less than 4,000 signatures. Dr. Cornel West had even fewer, and other people-powered grassroots candidates like Claudia De La Cruz were discouraged from even attempting this daunting task. The only independent candidate who appears to have met the requirement has a billionaire running mate and billionaire funders, and spent over a million dollars to get on New York’s ballot.”
Stein is referencing independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his vice presidential running mate, Nicole Shanahan. Kennedy has espoused some harsh attacls against Arabs and Muslims during his campaign appearances and has refused interviews with Arab and Muslim media.
“As part of this oppressive system of ballot access hurdles designed by entrenched incumbents, they set up unimportant but strictly-enforced technical requirements to give themselves more weapons to throw their opponents off the ballot,” said Dr. Stein. “It was crystal clear on our petition what people were signing for: Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. The names of electors for the Electoral College are immaterial to the petition, and would be an outrageous justification for throwing tens of thousands of signatures in the trash, after hundreds of volunteers pounded the streets for weeks to give another choice to the over 60% of US voters who say we need more choices. Voters’ hunger for more choices includes grassroots campaigns too, not just billionaire-funded candidates who can spend millions of dollars getting on ballots.”
“Right now, New York is poised to have fewer choices on its ballot than any other state. This suppression of voter choice is part of the Democratic Party’s broader assault on democracy. After taking control of New York state government, Democrats tripled ballot access signature requirements while keeping the same short 6-week petitioning period. The DNC has broadcasted that they are paying lawyers and operatives to try to keep their competitors off the ballot, and recently posted a job to infiltrate opponents’ campaigns. The Democrats’ attacks on democracy are too numerous to list, but maybe the most notorious is how they impersonated Green Party officials to call voters in North Carolina to pressure them into removing their names from the Green Party’s ballot access petitions. This is authoritarian, anti-democratic voter suppression and the height of hypocrisy from the Democratic Party, which claims to fight for voter’s rights, but in reality only fights to tighten the duopoly’s stranglehold on power.”
“In this election where millions of voters are desperate for a real choice, our campaign has emerged as an unstoppable force for ending genocide and rescuing democracy from the Democrats and Republicans,” said Dr. Stein. “Their assaults on democracy cannot stop us and only inspire us to fight twice as hard. We look forward to overturning their authoritarian tactics in court and continuing to grow this unstoppable movement to bring democracy to the United States and win the peaceful, just future we all deserve.”
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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