Democratic Plots to Kick the Green Party off State Ballots Cost Trump Arizona and Wisconsin
Richard Moorhead
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There were three critical swing states in which the Green Party appeared on the ballot in 2016 and didn’t appear in 2020. The states of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania all removed the Green Party from the presidential election in 2020, with Democratic operatives using underhanded tactics to kick them off.
Labor activist Howie Hawkins was the Green Party’s 2020 presidential nominee.
In 2016, the Green Party nominee Jill Stein won more than 34,000 votes in Arizona. If a Green Party candidate had appeared with ballot access in the state in 2020, he or she would’ve been sure to win enough votes to erode Biden’s 10,500 vote margin of victory in the state and ensure Trump won.
The Arizona legislature shortened the time period in which smaller parties have the chance to collect signatures for ballot access in the advance of the election. This served to effectively disenfranchise the Green Party, which didn’t gather the more than 30,000 signatures it would need to secure ballot access. A Green Party activist described the move as an unfair attack on third parties.
The Green Party vote total in Wisconsin varied from over 30,000 in 2016 to 1,000 in 2020- without ballot access. Biden won Wisconsin by 20,000 votes, making it more than likely that Trump would’ve won Wisconsin if the Green Party was on the ballot.
Three Democrat-aligned justices denied the Green Party ballot access in the state in a September 2020 court ruling. Hawkins had sued for ballot access after Wisconsin election commissioners disqualified several thousand of his ballot signatures, narrowly placing him under the threshold required to access the ballot.
The Wisconsin Election Commission had disqualified thousands of ballot access signatures from Hawkins’ running mate, Angela Walker, by alleging that she herself had listed an erroneous personal address on nominating petitions. This argument precluded the possibility of Walker changing her address or moving during the election, and ultimately didn’t challenge the veracity of the signatures of those who signed to place her on the ballot. This act ultimately disenfranchised Green Party petition signers of their voice.
Democratic partisan operatives have long loathed the Green Party for providing an alternative to Democratic corporatism, while touting the controlled opposition of the Libertarian Party. There’s reason to think that the Libertarian Party primarily draws votes from Democratic-leaning voters, as well, but much less so than the Green Party.
The 2016 Green Party vote total of roughly 50,000 may not have been enough overturn Biden’s 80,000 vote margin of victory in Pennsylvania, but it could’ve conceivably acted as a spoiler against Biden in the Keystone State in a situation where the 2020 Green Party candidate outperformed Stein. If the Green Party ballot presence in all three states proved enough to erode Biden’s margin of victory enough, Donald Trump would’ve won the 2020 presidential election.
There’s no reason that the Libertarian Party-largely known as a front organization for oligarchs such as Charles Koch- should have ballot access in elections where the Green Party, a grassroots environmentalist party, does not.
Follow me on Gab @WildmanAZ, Twitter @Wildman_AZ, and on Parler @Moorhead.
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