By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
With the Republican Convention convening in Cleveland, complete with protests outside and floor fights inside, the Libertarian Party is hustling to give Ohio voters disaffected with both major parties another choice.
Because the party’s gubernatorial candidate, Charlie Earl of Bowling Green, was bumped from the 2014 ballot, the Libertarians do not qualify to have their presidential ticket Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, and running mate Bill Weld, former governor of Massachusetts, on the Ohio ballot this year.
So Nathan Eberly, of Bowling Green, and other Libertarians are collecting the 5,000 verified signatures needed for Johnson and Weld to appear as independents.
Eberly said it was not a high bar, and he’s heard the state party has more than 3,000 signatures on hand. Still, he was out and about Monday evening, meeting people at Grounds for Thought or visiting people’s homes to collect signatures.
That the party is having to struggle to get on the ballot in the key battleground state of Ohio this of all years is ironic, since the fortunes of the Libertarians has never looked brighter. “This year is probably going to be a banner year for the Libertarian Party because of the unpopularity of (Donald) Trump and (Hillary) Clinton,” Eberly said.
Some polls, he said, have Johnson gaining 13 percent of the vote, while others have him as low as 8 percent. Still, Eberly said, Johnson is within striking of the 15 percent Johnson needs to join the Democratic and Republican nominees on the stage for the first presidential debate Sept. 26 in Dayton.
He dismisses the criticism that voting for the Libertarians or Greens is just going to help a candidate they abhor be elected president as “fearmongering.”
That’s based on the assumption that a vote for the Green candidate is a vote that would have gone to the Democrats and a vote for the Libertarian pulls from the Republicans.
Eberly said polling is showing that the Libertarians are pulling equally from disaffected Republicans and disaffected supporters of Bernie Sanders.
They are drawn to the party’s belief in “getting government out of our wallets and out of our bedrooms,” he said.
The party stands for “smaller, efficient government and more personal freedom.”
That blend of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism is attracting support among LBGT individuals, he said.
On the issue of abortion, he said, the party is split. “We need to err on the side of more freedom.”
Eberly has set a personal goal of getting 100 signatures this week – he had about half on Monday. The party wants all the signatures in hand by Monday, July 25, so it has plenty of time to verify them. Usually it takes twice as many signatures on petitions to yield the number of verified signatures needed.
Eberly said the Libertarians are continuing their appeals of Earl’s removal from the 2014 ballot.
Ohio’s ballot access rules “are very confusing,” he said.
Despite the patchwork of various ballot access rules and regulations, he said, the party is hopeful to again have Johnson, who ran in 2012 as well, on the ballot in all 50 states.
