Serious help needed for Oklahoma petition drive

Get paid $2.50 per signature, or please donate to help pay for signatures, or I’m sorry but we’ll have to shut this drive down permanently in about a week.

Thuggish behavior by police and security in Oklahoma has prevented our petitioners from getting access to public places to collect signatures. Even the Oklahoma A.C.L.U. has been trying, but so far, failing, to help us get the police to stop harassing our petitioners and threatening to arrest them, even when we are petitioning legally on constitutionally protected places like public sidewalks near universities and art fairs.

We had hoped we could get this drive done for $2.00 per signature by early Fall. Winter’s almost here, which makes it harder to petition. We raised our price to $2.50 per signature weeks ago, we need 24,712 valid signatures, and we’re only about 1/3 of the way through.

Click here to donate.

We postponed starting our Kentucky drive till next year because of problems in Oklahoma. We can’t put things off in other states much longer.

Tempers are flaring: mine, our petitioners in Oklahoma (some stalwart petitioners have left the state it’s so hard), our Libertarian National Committee (who has to decide whether to keep going–or call it quits). We raised $11,400 online over the summer for this. If we reach $20,000 online, that will help make up about half of the shortfall I’m projecting to complete this drive.

Ballot Access expert Richard Winger donated $30,000 for this petition drive. I’m not looking forward to calling him and asking him how upset he’ll be if we cancel the drive and can only return part of his money after failing to get on the ballot. I need your help to go forward.

Wednesday, I personally donated $200 directly to the LP Oklahoma, which will help them with printing costs.

Will you donate $200 to our efforts?

We added another petition organizer last week to help get more petitioners on the street. If you are willing to try petitioning for $2.50 per signature, contact Paulie Frankel (paulie.frankel@lp.org or 205-534-1622) for details. He’s been petitioning for the LP for over 10 years and can help you get started.

Click here to donate, or visit LP.org/oklahoma

Sincerely,

Wes Benedict, Executive Director