[Lnc-business] report on Oklahoma visit

[Scott L.]

Mr. Executive Director:

 

Thank you for the detailed summary of your trip to Oklahoma.

 

"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.

   WB"

 

That's nice, but:

 

https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_political_parties_in_
Oklahoma

 

"To continue to be officially recognized by the state, a political party's
candidate for governor <https://ballotpedia.org/Governor_of_Oklahoma>  or
president in a general election must receive

at least 10 percent of the vote."

 

So, the chance of the Libertarian Party having ballot status in Oklahoma in
December 2016 is very close to zero.

That doesn't mean the LNC or the LNC-EC should immediately shut off funds
for ballot access in Oklahoma, but when determining which states should
receive money from the National LP, we are not being good stewards of our
donor's money unless we take into account the chance of retaining ballot
access in a given state after the election.


   Scott Lieberman

  _____  

From: Lnc-business [mailto:lnc-business-bounces at hq.lp.org] On Behalf Of Wes
Benedict
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2015 12:48 PM
To: lnc-business at hq.lp.org
Cc: Richard Winger
Subject: [Lnc-business] report on Oklahoma visit

 

 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-driv
e

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. 

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