The Libertarian Party of Tennessee is hoping to show the absurdity of ballot access laws in the state
Nashville, TN: This November, 28 candidates for Governor will be listed on the ballot in Tennessee. For regularly-scheduled statewide general elections, this is the largest number of candidates on the ballot in U.S. history.
The primary reason for the large count of candidates in the Tennessee Governor’s race is the Libertarian Party’s running of fifteen candidates. They used the independent procedure, which only needs 25 signatures.
Members of the Libertarian Party of Tennessee (LPTN) approved this initiative to draw attention to the irrational ballot access laws of Tennessee. With 25 signatures required to run as a Republican, Democrat, or Independent, and 33,844 required to run as a 3rd Party, Libertarian Gubernatorial candidates across the state have decided to seek the office running on a shared platform: “make elections free and equal.”
In Article 1, Section 5, the Tennessee state constitution declares that elections should be free and equal. Yet, only two parties have access to the ballot and rely on state-funded primaries for their nomination process. In order to be recognized on the ballot, the Libertarian Party is up against a threshold of 2.5% of the voters in the previous governor’s race, or 33,844 signatures.
Cole Ebel, Chairman of the LPTN made this comment, “We attempted to have that number lowered to 5,000 through legislation, to make the ballots more free and equal. We even made a commitment to rely on privately funded caucuses, not state-funded primaries, to nominate our candidates. That effort was killed by legislative committee.”
David Sexton, candidate for Governor and Vice Chair of the LPTN said, “We’re running as independents because the state of Tennessee won’t recognize us as a party. If we’re relegated to being independents, then we’re all forced to run independently.”
About the Libertarian Party: The Libertarian Party of Tennessee is committed to America’s heritage of freedom: individual liberty and personal responsibility, a free-market economy of abundance and prosperity, a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace and free trade. Learn more at LPTN.org.
For more information please go to LPTN.org or contact Marketing Committee Chairman Joshua Eakle via text or phone 865.318.1508 or via email at josh@recuro.org.
