Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Petition Filed Today

I am just returned from Albany where the state candidates filed our independent nominating petition with the state board of elections at 11:00 am today. The exact number of signatures was not counted, but it is about 30,000, double the 15,000 required. 7,195 pages of signatures were filed.

A team of Greens from around the state worked in Albany all weekend to get the petitions ready for filing. Judy Einach (the state petition coordinator from Buffalo), Ian Wilder (state co-chair from Babylon), Eric Jones (a state executive committee member from Buffalo) and Jerry Kann (a state committee member from Queens and a member of Howie Hawkins campaign staff) worked all night, finishing the two sets of copies at Kinko's at 7:00 am this morning.

Many thanks to everyone who collected and cleaned signatures! The top petitioners statewide were Jerry Kann and Howie Hawkins with about 3,000 signatures each.

Several reporters, including Associated Press, came to our press conference at the BOE, and then we went to the press room in the capitol building to visit with other reporters. All the reporters are interested to know if we will be in the debates. Now that we have submitted our petitions and presumably will be on the ballot, we are pressing to be included in the debates. General objections to our petitions have to be filed by Friday.

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