queerbychoice | Bumper Stickers

My recent discovery that my beloved Peace & Freedom Party (a California-only extreme left-wing political party formed during the Vietnam War) has miraculously succeeded in getting itself restored to the California ballot (which it was removed from for not getting enough votes in 1998, and no other party removed from the ballot for two elections in a row had ever succeeded in getting itself reinstated) has made me feel a need to concretely support them somehow. It was an absolutely horrible experience for me to endure two elections without any Peace & Freedom Party candidates to choose from; the only other left-wing party listed on the California ballots is the Green Party and I simply do not feel anywhere near as warmly toward the Green Party as I do toward the Peace & Freedom Party. In the 2000 presidential election I agonized for months over who to vote for, because the Peace & Freedom Party hadn't bothered running a candidate since they'd been removed from the ballot, and I simply didn't like Ralph Nader enough to be able to bring myself to vote for him. Nor did I like Al Gore enough to be able to bring myself to vote for him either. So I ended up resorting to a write-in candidate, David McReynolds from the Democratic Socialists Party, but I know perfectly well that nobody even bothers tallying up write-in votes, so it felt the same as being denied any vote at all. It is an immense joy to me to have the Peace & Freedom Party restored to its place on the California ballots again, so that I once again have the opportunity in every election to always get to vote for somebody I actually like, even if I know they're not going to win. And I feel guilty that I wasn't one of the people who really did much to help get the Peace & Freedom Party restored to the ballot, so I feel a need to do concrete things to support them more now that they're back.

The two most obvious methods of supporting them are to change my voter registration to list my party affiliation as the Peace & Freedom Party, and to vote for their candidates, because both the number of registered voters they get and the number of votes their candidates get are taken into consideration when determining whether they remain listed on the California ballot. And so I have given a great deal of consideration to switching my party registration from Democrat to Peace & Freedom, but that would prevent me from voting in the Democratic primaries and I really feel it's rather important to me to be able to do that. As for voting for their candidates, I'm sure I will do plenty of that because I already did vote for them rather more often than I voted for Democrats back before they were removed; but that wasn't enough to prevent them from getting removed, and in the most immediately upcoming election (the recall election) I'm not even sure I'll be doing that much.

So I was thinking about ways to do more than that, and one of the things that occurred to me was to get a Peace & Freedom Party bumper sticker for my car. I searched the internet, however, and the Peace & Freedom Party does not seem to have any bumper stickers. They do have a logo though; perhaps I'll just make my own Peace & Freedom Party bumper sticker. Perhaps I can even set them up with a way of selling Peace & Freedom Party bumper stickers to others; I've made arrangements with online places to sell queer by choice merchandise before (there's a queer by choice pin I designed being sold for $1.00 in the next-to-last row on the bottom of this page).

Currently my car's bumper contains a long narrow rainbow stripe bumper sticker across the top, and one bumper sticker centered underneath it that says: "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." - Abbie Hoffman. If I added a new bumper sticker I would want to add more than one, because I have a thing for symmetry. And then I got a catalog in the mail from Northern Sun and I was looking through their bumper stickers, and then I decided I need your help narrowing the choices down.

[Poll #185108]

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I simply do not feel anywhere near as warmly toward the Green Party as I do toward the Peace & Freedom Party

Why? Knowing nothing about the Peace & Freedom party, I'm curious about how they differ from the Greens.

To start with, look at the names of the parties: Peace and Freedom are the two biggest issues I care about, quite succinctly embedded into the name of the party. The Green Party does not foreground these two issues as much; they're more prominently concerned with issues that are of roughly equal importance to almost everyone, such as the environment (hence the name of the party) and placing limits upon corporate greed. The Peace & Freedom Party takes a greater interest in issues that are of primary interest to specific minority groups, such as all different kinds of discrimination. For example, the Green Party runs candidates who say things like Ralph Nader did in the 2000 election: he said he did not support legalizing same-sex marriage. To the Green Party, saying things like that which oppose the freedoms of specific minorty groups is okay as long as you're leftist in general on the issues that affect the majority, such as the environment and corporate greed. But the Peace & Freedom Party would never think of running a candidate who would say what Ralph Nader said. The Peace & Freedom Party also tends to be a bit more socialist in its economic policies than the Green Party. Looking at the Peace & Freedom Party website will also give you an immediate impression of just how small they are compared to the Green Party; the Green Party tends to focus on getting votes, and the Peace & Freedom Party is more accepting of its third-party role to organize local community activism and draw attention to the issues in ways that don't require their candidates to actually get elected - they're just running to get themselves heard during the campaign. I think they stick to their principles more fearlessly because they really don't have as much hope as even the Green Party has of getting actual votes.

i think that in california, if you're registered as an independent or "decline to state" your party affiliation, you can vote in whatever primary you want. when you go to the polls, you get to ask for either the republican, democrat, or nonpartisan ballot. that way, you can vote in the democratic primary (or even sabotage a republican primary!) but still support your peace and freedom candidates.

of course, this doesn't help the peace and freedom party explicitly, which is what you're after, but you do benefit from greater flexibility at the polls...

how do you know this? is baked alaska located in california?

i thought you had to take the ballot of whatever party you're registered as. and i mean, the only way i can read the questions is from the sample ballot they send me in the mail, and the sample ballot they send me in the mail is democratic because that's what i'm registered at. at the polls all they do is hand me a punch card with no text anywhere on it, so the only way i know what holes to punch is by lining them up with the questions on the sample ballot they sent me in the mail.

I got a free pin! yayyy! :)

from california secretary of state elections website (http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_decline.htm#primary):

California currently has a "modified" closed primary system. SB 28 (Ch. 898, Stats. 2000), relating to primary elections, was chaptered on September 29, 2000 and took effect on January 1, 2001. SB 28 implemented a "modified" closed primary system that permits unaffiliated ("decline to state") voters to participate in a primary election if authorized by an individual party's rules and duly noticed by the Secretary of State.

If you are a voter who has declined to state an affiliation with a political party, you may be able to vote for a candidate of a specific party in the upcoming March 2, 2004 Primary Election. You may request the ballot of a political party if authorized by the party's rules and duly noticed by the Secretary of State.

If you do not request such a ballot, you will be given a nonpartisan ballot, containing only the names of all candidates for nonpartisan offices and measures to be voted upon at the primary election.

as for baked alaska, it tastes delicious, no matter where it's located!

which i take to mean that if you are a "decline to state" voter, you are asked in advance of the election if you have a ballot preference for absentee voting OR if you go to the polls, they look up your name, see that you're not affiliated, and ask you then. i could be mistaken, since i've never tried it... it could be two-party trickery.

I take it to mean that you have to personally notify them by mail before the election on your own initiative that you want a particular party's ballot. But in any case, it wouldn't be available to me as an option if I were registered with the Peace & Freedom Party, so I'm not interested in just being unaffiliated.

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