Cornel West was well known and liked by many before he made his early June announcement that he is running for president. That has given West’s Green Party presidential campaign a good foundation upon which to build. A poll from late June suggests West may have support of four percent of voters in a hypothetical presidential election choice among West, Republican Donald Trump, and Democrat Joe Biden.
In the November election, Republican and Democratic candidates for New York governor will face no opposition on the ballot from any third party candidates. The reason is not that nobody desires to run as a third party candidate. Instead, third party candidates were unable to meet the state government’s newly-imposed increased number of signatures required on ballot access petitions.
The United States Green Party issued a press release Thursday announcing it is seeking “to get ballot lines for all 50 states and DC and the U.S. territories in 2020.” This would be an improvement over the 2016 US general election. The press release states that the party had ballot access in 47 states then, with access in three of those states just for write-in votes.
Why can’t people just vote for Green Party candidates across the country? The answer is that many state governments have imposed special burdens, including the requirement of gathering many signatures from registered voters and submitting those signatures to the state governments, in order for third parties and their candidates to be included as options in voting booths.
After completing six terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat from Georgia, Cynthia McKinney was the 2008 Green Party nominee for president of the United States. In a Friday letter, McKinney announced her endorsement of Adam Kokesh for the 2020 Libertarian Party presidential nomination.