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Presidential candidates 'shoot it out' for Texas ballot

access

It's not every day that presidential candidates take up

arms as part of their campaigns, but that's what happened

April 28, when two candidates for the Libertarian Party's

nomination for president had a "shoot-out" in Dallas,

Texas.

Michael Badnarik and Gary Nolan, two of the leading

candidates for the LP presidential nomination, had a

shooting match as a fundraiser for ballot access in Texas -

- where the LP must gather 45,540 valid signatures to get

on the ballot across the state in November.

The event raised some money for the ballot access effort,

with about 30 people showing up to fire handguns with

Badnarik and Nolan. Most were from the Dallas area, but

some Louisiana LP members also showed up to show their

support, event organizer David Rostcheck said.

"As predicted, Michael Badnarik did beat Gary Nolan, but I

think Nolan held his own," Rostcheck noted. "Badnarik has

done a lot of shooting, but Gary just kind of picked it up

and did his shooting after a short lesson, and he did

fairly well."

"When have you known the Democrat or Republican candidates

do anything except criticize each other?" Badnarik asked.

But while the shooting contest was entertaining and drew

some attention, the more important contest -- the upcoming

election -- is much more important. And the Texas LP is

still in danger of not getting on the ballot.

"We have collected 36,765 signatures so far," Wes Benedict,

volunteer ballot access coordinator, said on April 30 --

about two-thirds of the way into the 75-day petition

period.

"We have to have 45,540 good signatures, which means we're

going to need approximately 75,000 raw signatures," he

said. "We check our signatures with the registered voter

database that we got from the secretary of state, and we

try to estimate what our validity rate is."

By election law in the state, anyone who voted in the

Democrat or Republican primaries in March is ineligible to

sign the LP's ballot access petition, as are people who

aren't registered to vote and those who have already signed

petitions for another political party.

"These signatures have to be turned in on May 24," Benedict

said. "I'd say we still have a 50-50 chance of making it by

that time, if we continue speeding up our pace.

"We started collecting signatures on March 10, so two-

thirds of our time is gone and we're about halfway there.

We've been collecting more signatures per week recently, so

we may still make it."

A majority of the signatures so far have been collected by

paid petitioners; volunteers are working hard, but have

collected fewer than 6,000 of the signatures so far, he

said.

"We haven't done a petition drive here in 18 years, so a

lot of our volunteers didn't know how hard it is and many

of them get discouraged. It really is hard work."

But it's hard work that has to be done if the Libertarian

Party is to get on the ballot in Texas. Libertarians have

filed for many offices in the state -- including for 31 of

the 32 U.S. Congressional seats there -- and they must get

on the ballot to have an impact.

For more information on the LP's quest for ballot access in

Texas or in many other states, go to www.tx.lp.org or to

www.lp.org/campaigns/ballot.

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Support Gary Nolan for President!

Visit www.garynolan.com

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