{news} PRESS RELEASE- CT GREENS BLAME NEW MEDIA 'BLACKOUT' FOR MCKINNEY NOT BEING ON FALL BALLOT

[Tim McKee]

CT GREENS BLAME NEWS MEDIA ‘BLACKOUT’ FOR MCKINNEY NOT BEING ON FALL
BALLOT

NO NEWS COVERAGE AT ALL -DOOMED PETITION DRIVE


HARTFORD, CT-Connecticut Green Party officials said they blame the
news media’s ‘blackout’ or TOTAL LACK OF NEWS COVERAGE of Green Party
candidate Cynthia McKinney, even after she won the national
party’s nomination, in large part for her not being on the ballot
in the fall. They conceded falling short in their drive for 15,000
total signatures for three main reasons.

Tim McKee, a Green Party spokesperson explained “First, it is next
to impossible for to run a petition drive in the public WITHOUT
even the slightest news coverage to let people know you are
petitioning for a candidate. The former Democrat Congresswoman
turned Green Party candidate for President IS newsworthy, but
shockingly, NOT ONE of the local media did even one story on her
running for President. We sent out press releases, she campaigned
in the state, and past Green Party candidates for President Ralph
Nader and David Cobb have received some news coverage, but McKinney
received none
this time. We have to ask why--because she and running mate Rosa
Clemente are women? Women of color? Cutback of staffs at local news
mediaa out lets?


McKee added “Even the most obscure Democrat and Republicans had
some coverage in the primaries and links on news websites,
and there were articles about Ralph Nader running as an Independent
and Bob Barr running as a Libertarian, but none about McKinney running as
the candidate of third
largest party in the United States, and even though Greens have been
elected to local city and town councils in Connecticut.

“Second,31 states have lower petition requirements than CT. and some
states like Louisiana and Colorado have NO signatures requirements at
all. (Ballot Access News the petitions that were submitted early were
getting a very high 65% rejection rate for signatures by partisan
Democrat
and Republican registrars of voters. The requirement of 7,500 valid
signatures means submitting twice or three times that number and on
169 different forms--one for each small town in CT. Even with
30 people working on this drive, we could not collect the high number
or challenge why so many signatures were deemed INVALID at each of
the 169 town halls,” McKee said

McKee added “Third, because of the quirky CT ballot laws, Greens
had to have “placeholder” candidates listed, and that leads to more
confusion with the public. Who OUR candidates were and why other
people's names were listed was something only political insiders could
explain,
which made it harder to collect signatures from ordinary voters.”

Greens are considering a “Registered write-in” campaign which will
require 
local officials to count each write-in vote for McKinney.

#END OF RELEASE







******************************************
Tim McKee, Manchester CT, main number cell-860-778-1304, 860-643-2282
 National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT.
BLOG-http://thebiggreenpicture.blogspot.com

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