Will there be a Libertarian candidate for Georgia Governor in 2026?
Since 1988, when the Libertarian Party first earned its statewide ballot access in Georgia there have been 82 Libertarian candidates for statewide offices. This includes the first woman candidate for Georgia Governor, Carole Anne Rand in 1990, and many others who would never have been able to be a candidate were it not for our access to the ballot for these statewide offices.
Our ballot access is never guaranteed. Every General Election we must earn it again by surpassing a threshold of votes for any statewide candidate. For eighteen elections in a row we have done exactly that. The year 2024 will be the nineteenth General Election where we must earn our ballot access and we are faced with the most difficult situation in our history.
Due to a complex series of legal decisions, we are faced with the most difficult situation we’ve ever confronted. This year we will have only the Presidential race as our sole means to earn our Ballot Access, it doesn’t get any more uncertain or harder. We are in uncharted waters now.
There is only one path forward, we must find all those in Georgia who describe themselves as Libertarian, and encourage them to vote LP in the November 5th General Election.
Nothing is certain, or easy, but this is within our reach. We are going to have to do our honest best, and rise to the challenge.
What has Happened?
On July 14 2020 a complaint was filed in the US District Court, Northern District of Georgia. Four African-American voters in Fulton County Georgia sued the Georgia Secretary of State for violation of the Voting Rights Act claiming that the way Georgia conducts its elections for Public Service Commissioner disadvanteges black voters. You can read the complaint here. Please take a few moments to read this complaint, it is only eleven pages and not a difficult read.
On August 5 2022 the above mentioned court found for the Plaintiffs and enjoined the Secretary of State from including Public Service Commissioner elections on the ballot. This cancelled the Public Commissioner District 2 election that was scheduled for 2022. You can read the complete decision here.
The effect this would have on our ability to earn ballot access in the 2024 elections was immediately clear. Being a Presidential election year would normally include Public Service Commissioner (PSC) elections. Cancelling the PSC elections leaves us with only the Presidential election to earn ballot access. The LP of Georgia has met the vote threshold for our ballot access in only one Presidential election, Gary Johnson in 2016.
The situation changed on November 23 2023 when the decision to enjoin was reversed on appeal by the US Court of Appeals, Eleventh District. This decision restored the PSC elections to their former status and it appeared that the PSC would be on the 2024 ballot, a decision favourable to our ballot access. You can view the appellate court’s decision here.
Believing that there would be PSC elections in 2024 the LP of Georgia nominated two PSC candidates at our state convention on January 25 2024. On February 1 2024 we began to get the news that the Secretary of State was not qualifying the PSC elections. This was highly unusual and raised many questions. Over the next few days we learned that the appellate court’s decision to reverse was being held up due to some legal moves that are currently opaque to us. We are compelled to infer that the two scheduled PSC elections will be cancelled for the 2024 General Election. We must earn our ballot access this year in the Presidential race.
We know what must be done, let’s get busy.
What is Ballot Access?
When we speak of “ballot access” we are referring to the laws, or statutes, that determine the rules one must meet to have a candidate’s name printed on the ballot that a voter sees when they vote at a polling place.
These sort of laws exist in every state, and are different in each state. Here in Georgia, our ballot access laws separate the elections into the statewide elections, those where every voter in Georgia can participate, and districted races, those such as US House and Georgia General Assembly, where only voters in a specified area participate.
Additionally, the laws specify different rules determined by your association designated as “political party”, “political body” and independent. The LP of Georgia is a “political body”.
For a political body, the rules for statewide elections specify that any statewide candidate can qualify for ballot if they meet one of two criteria. If the political body, in the current year, secures a nominating petition of 1% of registered voters they can qualify for the ballot. Or, if the political body ran a statewide candidate in the previous general election that earned a vote total equal to 1% of the registered voters in that election.
The LP of Georgia first earned statewide ballot access by nominating petition in 1988 and has retained that ballot access through earned votes every general election since. To lose our ballot access would mean we would have to do a nominating petition of about 80,000 signatures for each statewide candidate we wanted to place on the ballot.
Ballot access for the districted elections is different. For a political body to place a candidate on the ballot in a districted election requires a nominating petition of 5% of the registered voters in that district. These petitions can be as small as about 100 for a partisan school board seat and as high as 25,000 for a US House seat. The Georgia US House petitioning requirements are reputed to be some of most difficult in the nation and in fact have never been accomplished by any candidate since these laws were passed in 1943.