Ballot Proxy Wars and the Primary Selection Process: The best way to get a mule to move isnt by dangling carrots but smacking them with a 2 x 4 across the head!

"Stop Beatin Them Mules"
JOSIAH "SI" KLEGG By John McElroy
Book Two:
THRU THE STONE RIVER CAMPAIGN
published 1910
source cite

As most Libertarians understand, the Primary Selection Process is the other two parties way of capturing a larger audience of voters - whom dont want to pay to play in politics - but also dont have much to any idea that they as Taxpayers, are also footing the bill for what should be private Political Party business, when it comes to slating and vetting candidates for elected office in each County and State in November, similar to what we here at the Libertarian Party of Allen County, Indiana will be doing on Monday evening at Golden Corral on Lima Road in Fort Wayne at 6 PM, and later two weeks down the road at the State Convention as well. This jockeying for position and posture in a starting gate piled so high, it almost becomes impossible to manage when the candidates start chewing on each others feed bags, to try and find something good to use against each other, finally came to a butting head this last week.

Gina Burgess, whom has been spotlighted here before in a more positive light and has been an encouragement to the Party previously, filed a questionably huge complaint against 27 fellow Municipal Elections candidates with the Allen County Election Board for fraudulent filing of particular CFA documents (PDF 8 Pages). After I made the initial accusation of her actions being that of a Ballot Proxy War she responded and posted the above linked WANE News Channel 15 story as well as two personal Facebook post explaining her actions and commenting on the fallout the day after.

drawn by John Cox
written by Allen Forkum
circa 2003

IMHO what makes this a ballot proxy war - and not just a concerned candidate with standing filing in support of another candidate already disenfranchised by the ACEB - is that said candidate is holding the ACEB by the balls and all the other candidates by the throat by stipulating recension of said 40+ complaints if original disenfranchisement is resolved prior to the day of common selection by Primary Voters, that technically qualifies as blackmail even intimidation, even though there were already stipulated conflicts of interest by the Judge whom recused himself on grounds and pushed the hearing date back a week.

""... But, Burgess said the Allen County Election Board mishandled complaints filed within that deadline by Democratic mayoral candidate David Roach. The board held a hearing on February 18 in which it did take one candidate off the ballot and dismissed the rest of the complaints. Roach is now appealing in court. On Facebook, Burgess wrote to the board, “if you are willing to engage and settle the matter of Roach v ACEB before the primary” then she would drop her complaints against the 27 candidates.

“I’m willing to withdraw them even though they are valid because I believe the Election Board will be more vigilant in the future, but this other case needs to stop being in legal limbo and needs to move on,” Burgess said.

Downs was at the hearing for Roach’s complaints and said he thinks the board did take them seriously.

“[Roach] did himself some damage by saying he looked for evidence and couldn’t find any, but you should keep looking. I can make that same claim about anybody, and that’s not a credible reason to investigate,” Downs said. .....""

Does the ACEB need overhauled? Yes a long time ago.

But filing as a threat to warrant an untimely outcome in a separate case and also questionable due process is my concern and should be every other Citizens as well. Gina, you should have either a. not dangled the carrot of recension or b. waited til after the Primary and filed direct charges of perjury. Sometimes you just got start smacking a mule across the head to get it to budge they dont like eating their vegetables either. In other words, the proper action would have been a Writ of Mandamus against the ACEB; instead you put the ACEB against everyone else on a respective hunch in some cases and in others still questionable concerns.