* My belief that the Constitution Party’s 2020 presidential ticket for this year could hope for nothing better than a write-in candidacy was, it turns out, too pessimistic. I learned earlier this week that the ticket will be able to appear on the ballot—provided enough of us are willing to serve as electors. The process for doing this is much less involved than the one I described for a write-in candidacy.
The Constitution Party’s Western States Regional Chairman, Janine Hansen, sent me the following message earlier today (brackets indicate modifications to match Pious Eye site usage conventions; bolding of some text removed):
Hello David,
Thank you so much for agreeing to be an elector for Independent Candidate Don Blankenship[,] who is the nominee of the Constitution Party. We now have identified 33 electors. However, we need a total of 55 electors[;] so we need 22 more.
We really need your help! If you could find just one person [who] would be an elector[,] that [would] help so much! Do you know anyone…[whom] you could ask to be an elector? [He or she] can be registered in any party or not even registered at all as long as [he or she] lives in California. [I somewhat doubt the “not registered at all” part, since current registration was required when I filed paperwork to become a write-in elector. But I could be wrong, since this is a different situation.]
There is really nothing [he or she needs] to do except give us [his or her] name, physical address, phone number, and email. [To participate, just email this information to Janine.] Only the name and address go on the electors list to the state.
If you need more information about Don Blankenship go to his website at www.donblankenship.com.
Yours for Liberty,
Janine Hansen
775-397-6859
Western States Regional Chairman of the Constitution Party
Though I normally wouldn’t pass along someone else’s contact information in a post, Janine Hansen’s contact information already appears on the Independent American Party’s Web site, so inclusion in a Pious Eye site post should not provide the spammers with any information they don’t already have.
Please consider joining me in making this voting option available to our fellow Californians.
* Image: Don Blankenship for the Constitution 2020. Copyright © David M. Hodges, piouseye.com, with all rights reserved. Created by combining and modifying two images provided by Wikimedia Commons, which identifies both as being in the public domain. Supporters of the Blankenship 2020 campaign are hereby granted permission to reuse the image so long as they note where they got it and retain the copyright notice. Those who’d rather just use the banner from Wikimedia may find it here.
I received an email message informing me that Don Blankenship now has enough electors to appear on the November ballot. Woo-hoo! Janine Hansen hasn’t responded to my inquiry about whether she would like for me to deactivate the email link for potential volunteers or to alter it into a general request for information about the Constitution Party, so I’m leaving it as-is. If you’d like to volunteer as a backup or extra elector, in case some problem arises, or if you’d like to find out more about the Constitution Party or one of its state affiliates in the West, feel free to use the link, altering your subject line as appropriate.
As it happens, Janine was assuming a Constitution Party victory in a ballot-access court case. Since this would have meant winning in the same court system that has upheld various rights-violating dictates by state and local officials responding to COVID-19, my natural pessimism has again been vindicated: The case I didn’t know this depended on has been lost. This means the CP is back to where I thought it would end up months ago, looking for Blankenship write-in electors. Since I struggled to become a Blankenship supporter in the first place, I admit to lacking enthusiasm for this. Good thing I filed the paperwork months ago!
Since most American voters resemble an intolerant person I interacted with recently in another forum (my side of that interaction will show up on the Pious Eye site sooner or later), thinking that people should just shut up about their political and religious beliefs, and voting based, not on principles, but on calculations of personal interest (usually short-term, and usually without thought for the long-term health and stability of the nation), I’m not hopeful for America’s future. Since I vote based on principles and a sense of duty, however, hopefulness that America will be rescued from its headlong rush into perdition is not a prerequisite to my doing the right thing at the ballot (mail)box. Nor should it be a prerequisite for your doing so.
Good, informative update on what was happening!
Thanks, Mario!