[Lnc-business] report on Oklahoma visit

[Wes Benedict]

I went to Oklahoma for two reasons: first, to help with the petition 
drive, but second, to get a closer look so I could decide if I thought 
we should just shut it down. We are spending about $2,500 a week there, 
and we're about to double that rate, so if we are going to cut our 
losses and end it, the sooner the better.

My bottom line report to the LNC executive committee is that I'm 
confident we can ramp up our signature collection rate enough to finish 
the drive before the March 1 deadline, but we are going to have to 
exceed the $65,000 budget for Oklahoma by $15,000 to $25,000 to finish 
the drive.

I'm recommending we try to finish the drive, but it wouldn't be so 
unreasonable to end it now if that's what you decide to do. Things have 
gone worse than we had originally planned.

We initially hoped that we could do this drive for $2 per signature and 
that we could finish it by early fall. Recent petition drives in places 
like Arkansas have gone well, and with stories of petitioners fighting 
over turf and demanding the opportunity to work for us in some places, 
it seemed like we might actually be exceeding the market rate for 
signatures in some cases.

But things have been harder than expected in Oklahoma.On October 27, we 
raised the rate in Oklahoma from $2 to $2.50 per signature, and even at 
that higher rate, finding enough people to work has been a challenge.

Before we started the Oklahoma drive, stalwart libertarian petitioner 
Andy Jacobs warned us that petition drives for initiatives in other 
states in the fall would be competing with us for workers and would 
drive up our costs, so we needed to get it done over the summer. 
Unfortunately, we didn't start until the end of the summer.And while 
Andy did good work for us in Oklahoma for several weeks, he, as well as 
other petitioners, have indeed left Oklahoma for the higher paying 
non-Libertarian Party Petition work in other states that he warned us 
about. Although Andy is out of Oklahoma now, he does continue to stay 
interested in our progress and has been generous with suggestions for 
improvement. I'm sure he'd be happy to share his thoughts on our 
Oklahoma effort with any of you directly if you reach out to him.

One suggestion from Andy is that we should pay more to entice 
petitioners back and possibly even pay $5 per signature for door to door 
petitioning. Our petitioners have had hard times finding good locations 
with lots of the kind of foot traffic that makes for productive 
petitioning. Door-to-door petitioning can give very high validity 
signatures, so the $5/signature rate for 100% validity is not so far off 
from $2.50 per signature for around 65% validity.

In hind sight, I wish we had started this drive earlier. But I don't 
think right now we need to offer a higher pay rate (not that we could 
afford it, anyway). Instead, we need to focus on recruiting more 
petitioners, and we are already seeing success from that.

Projections I've sent to Bill Redpath and Nick Sarwark show that with 
the new workers we've already recruited, we will likely finish the drive 
on time. But we also have several more petitioners saying they will 
probably be here soon to help, and if just a couple of those pan out, we 
could finish in January.

I've heard lots of complaints from petitioners that it's been very hard 
to find good locations in Oklahoma to collect signatures. Petitioners 
have told us the grocery stores won't let them petition, public places 
like universities and festival grounds have been hostile, and the 
Oklahoma Driver's licensing places are too numerous to have significant 
people at any single location.

My uncle lives in Oklahoma City. I visited him Saturday night briefly 
and was surprised when he told me he had seen petitioners lately at the 
grocery and post office and he assumed they were ours. I asked him 
exactly which locations because I wondered about the conflicting 
reports. He specified by name the Crest grocery, Buy For Less grocery, 
and post office near his home. I had hoped to find time to visit those 
stores myself to ask why they might be letting petitioners for other 
efforts work there but not libertarians (assuming that was the case).

I didn't find time for that, but LPOK vice chair Tina Kelly has since 
told me that even she had been personally told by those chains she 
couldn't petition there, only to find out later that one of the 
petitioners she recruited somehow did get permission at a location of 
both chains.

I think some of our stalwart petitioners like Andy are used to finding 
locations where they occasionally hit the jackpot and collect over 500 
signatures on a single day. That makes up for the more common slow days. 
Petitioners who come from out of town usually have transportation and 
motel expenses they pay out of pocket. Locals don't have the travel 
overhead and we are getting a few locals working. They may be slower 
than someone like Andy, but they can go slower and still make the 
economics work. Locals can spend more time asking for permission at more 
places and can afford to get chased away from more locations.

I personally saw the entire batch of petition forms. That was 
reassuring. In fact I pulled an all-nighter Monday and scanned all 2,000 
sheets in case we need help remotely with validation, and because while 
often hearing anecdotes of certain petitioners routinely getting better 
validity than others, I wanted the opportunity to see for myself.

LP vice chair Tina Kelly has been indispensable to this drive. 
Petitioners turn in signatures to her, she gives us the counts, we wire 
funds, she writes checks, and pays the petitioners. She also visits with 
the elections authorities to find out important rules and procedures for 
our petition drive. She has worked to get cooperation from a couple 
single-issue groups doing ballot initiatives. Although results from 
those cooperation efforts have been lower than hoped, we’ve gotten a 
couple thousand signatures from the cooperation.

Tina's son recently put the Oklahoma registered voter database online in 
a searchable format to assist with validity checking. That will be 
hugely helpful.

While Tina has done lots of work, it's hard for one person to do all 
that she does plus respond to all the complaints from current 
petitioners and inquiries from prospective petitioners, not to mention 
answering frequent questions about progress from Bill Redpath and me. We 
recently decided to have Paul Frankel help with some of the local 
management assistance. I had gone to Oklahoma with the expectation that 
I might recommend removing Paul to save money, but right now I think we 
should keep him at least for a month to make sure new petitioners have 
someone they can reach quickly any time of day. Later we can reevaluate 
the cost of having him there.

Tina invited me and the LPOK officers and activists to a nice restaurant 
Tuesday night. I asked who would be a candidate if we got ballot access. 
Out of about ten people, at least 3 indicated interest, including one 
who was against attempting this daunting petition drive originally 
(because it’s so much work), but would run if we made it.

I told the prospect who might be interested in US Senate I'd give $200 
towards the $1,000 filing fee if he runs in 2016, and someone else 
quickly offered another $200. I think we’ll get several people to run 
for office in addition to having our candidate for President on the 
ballot if we get ballot access.

(My plane, where I'm writing most of this note, just landed in DC. Final 
thoughts below from the office.)

I’m not counting on legal help to make a difference in time for us. 
However, if our counsel or the Oklahoma ACLU is successful in time, of 
course that might make things easier.

I’m also mindful of keeping alive the dream for 50 state ballot access, 
and the negative impact giving up in Oklahoma now might have.

A Libertarian from Austin, Texas, Michael Chastain, donated $4,000 last 
week to help the Oklahoma petition drive. That’s in addition to the five 
thousand or so we raised online recently:

http://www.lp.org/blogs/staff/serious-help-needed-for-oklahoma-petition-drive

I rushed out to Oklahoma Saturday partly so I could be back in the 
office Wednesday to meet Mr. Chastain in person (he was visiting the 
D.C. area and was interested in visiting the headquarters today--Wednesday).

I’ll have more good news about support from Mr. Chastain soon.

The LNC-EC is schedule to meet Monday 12/7/2015, to decide whether or 
not to continue the LPOK drive. I’m sending this info to all of you know 
in case you’d like more information before that meeting.

cc'ing Richard Winger.

-- 
Wes Benedict, Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
*New address: 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314*
(202) 333-0008 ext. 232, wes.benedict at lp.org
facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational
Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership

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