How we get ballot access
June, interviewed by Daphne
Daphne: I'm a Berea college student and aspiring journalist and writer, interviewing my friend who does some work for the Kentucky Party, petitioning, getting people on the ballot. June, what do you petition for, who do you get on the ballot?
June: Governors, Presidents, big ticket offices take 2,000, up to 7,000 valid signatures. Local offices are 200 or 500 for Judge Executive, Sheriff, Coroner, School Board, important offices for the communities they serve. They take less, but, you know, do you have 250 friends?
Daphne: Probably not, dude.
June: That you could call up and say, sign this piece of paper–? Exactly. We help people get on there.
Daphne: Yeah, so what does that really look like? You go door to door asking people, will you sign this? What do you do?
June: Different ways. You can do a petition drive, but you can only get, say, 20 to 50 people in a room at one time. Going door to door's effective to flyer or talk to people in specific areas. Sometimes you need to go door-to-door to get signatures in districts without grocery stores or places where people gather. But, largely, we found it most effective to speak to people in parking lots, farmers's markets, parks. Places people gather.
Daphne: I imagine it must be from a social anxiety perspective, intimidating to go up to someone and ask them to sign something that, you know, maybe they don't want to sign. Maybe they actually hate it a lot. How do you deal with that?
June: People who know me understand I'm a very social, but very anxious person. I have trouble talking to strangers. This is definitely a game of understanding yourself, being able to pull out an inner salesperson, because it is–it is sales at the end of the day. I've found it a way to connect with people I'd never. I'd think, oh, their outfit is so cool. Their dog's so cute, but never go up. I really value being able to talk to neighbors and see how people feel about issues. A lot of people are like, oh, I don't support that. I don't like that. Understanding when to end a conversation and when you have a chance to educate someone is an important part of this.
Daphne: So you have to choose between like, when do I pursue further and educate or when is this person like a definite no? Is that hard to tell sometimes?
June: Absolutely. That's the largest learning curve that I've found personally. Understanding like, I don't have infinite time and maybe I need to gather 2,000 signatures, maybe I can get 100 today. And I spend 20, 30, 40 minutes talking to someone, that's a lot of time, but we're people, and it's important to connect. When you find a conversation that's feeding, take a break and to talk to someone.
Daphne: It's beautiful, the humanity of the work. But what about the work of the work? I imagine it's fast-paced?
June: It is. I revel in in the speed on occasion. Sometimes we need 200 signatures. We'll book a weekend and just mosey about. When we're working on a big office, gathering signatures is grueling and time-consuming. In the next calendar year, we're looking at 5 to 10,000 signatures, maybe 15 even. It's important to just be like, okay, how many am I going to get today? I enjoy being able to get into that mindset, that flow. It is really, really focused.
Daphne: You've also made this, like, a job?
June: We're politically active people any way you spin it, but we're people. We need money to support ourselves, hopefully doing things we enjoy, that feed our community. My very good colleague, Geoff, he has a family, children and a house. I don't drive, so the fact we travel together to canvass is extra meaningful. When I can't say, travel and pick blueberries in the spring because I'm beholden to people willing to travel with me, having seasonal income is a huge deal. So finding we both have just an incredible skill in this area, led Geoff to reach out to parties who need ballot access in other states, that have money but no skilled canvassers. We'll likely have enough work in other states to work free or cheap, you know, $5 an hour or something, running signature drives for the Kentucky Party.
Daphne: Tell me, has there been any notable incidents where you think back about them and you're laughing or you're, like, shocked in horror?
June: On our last drive, we went up to New Jersey, working for a Green Party member from [Palestine]. She's really cool. She was running for governor. Working for her campaign we talked to a lot of Zionists. There is a shockingly high concentration of Zionists who genuinely want Palestinian people to all die. I ran into a dozen people--well, a lot more than a dozen--that felt that way, outspoken people who said something to me.
When you're doing a drive for anything, if we were working for the Republicans, the Democrats are going to be mad at us. If we were working for the Democrats, the Republicans and the Democrats will be mad at us. That’s a joke–Anyway, if we're working for the Green Party, or our own party, the Kentucky Party, someone's going to be upset. People love being upset about politics. I don't feel personally that many of those experiences stick out horribly in my head.
Daphne: You ever had to fight someone? Anyone tried to fight you?
June: Maybe I've been vaguely threatened? That's the most. I'm pretty good at de-escalation, which maybe helps, but I feel most people are just not ready to swing.
Daphne: Yeah, that's real. Your ability to de-escalate is a good skill to have. And some amount of confidence. A lot of people would be too socially anxious, just too anxious to canvass. You know, bad at de-escalation, not a good salesperson. What other skills do you think separate you from people who couldn't do this job?
June: I would like to challenge that. Personally, I feel that people are more capable than they feel. Like, I have very bad anxiety, as I said at the beginning of this interview. And this was a huge, like, come out of my cocoon opportunity for me. Some people just don't want to talk to people. That's totally fair. That is a way to live a life and there's no shame in that. But, I think petitioning can be a really good opportunity to just come out of your shell and to talk to people. Even if you gather 10 signatures, or 20 or 200, that's great. What's the rest of the question?
Daphne: Like, what skills do you have? De-escalation, a bit of self-confidence?
June: What, I don't think I’m self-confident? I'm good at a ruse. Canvassing is good for people who are very passionate about something. For us, it's Palestine, the genocide that's going on, the people that are being killed and slaughtered. That gets my foot out the door, gets us motivated and moving. If you're very motivated by community connection, that's big too.
Daphne: I wanted to follow up on something you said earlier about the Kentucky Party. You said that you guys try to get people into local, odd offices. What are some overlooked public offices?
June: The Constable is one we're passionate about in the Kentucky Party. A huge issue in our country and our state in particular is homelessness, houselessness, and eviction rates are only going up. With federal funding being cut, we are seeing a huge gap in resources where people are unable to pay their rent and then don't have assistance. Maybe all they needed was a lawyer to double check something, or 20 bucks to keep their lights on, or whatever it may be. People are getting evicted at really high rates right now.
The Constable is voted into office for a four year term, then employed by rental companies or attorneys to serve papers. That's how they get paid. Or they can do nothing and not get paid, I guess. We see the Constable office as a viable option to provide assistance to people. There's nothing in the law against Constables supporting people with kindness, connecting them to case managers, housing support post eviction, moving support when eviction creeps up on tenants or they aren't able to move their things. It's a county office not many people know about.
We say, okay, there are already these structures that provide us power if we can get someone people can hold accountable in office. What can we do with that? Looking at the electoral standpoint, what can we do to build people in Kentucky up through the system that's already in place?
Daphne: If somebody's like, damn, I want to canvass with you, how would they go about doing that?
June: Contact anyone with the Kentucky Party. Executive Committee, or like, activists like me. All of us are pretty closely involved with getting ballot access in Kentucky for candidates. Mostly we are looking, especially in the early spring and late winter, January, February, March, for people to canvass their local areas and collect petitions for local offices, and some state and federal offices. Central Kentucky--Madison, Fayette counties, northern Kentucky, probably Paducah, maybe Ashland or Louisville, depending on who else announces they want to run between now and then.
Daphne: What does that look like, June? For you, from the time you wake up til you go to bed, what's your hour by hour? Do you have time to eat?
June: Well, with local things, we often will be a little group. Someone drives, I'm personally someone without a car. We'll go out, say 10, get some coffee, hit a couple of spots locally that we think will provide us some good numbers. We'll get some work done, train some people to canvass. We'll do some talking, chit chatting, grab a little bite for lunch, get dinner together, and head in for the night. Sometimes we'll do that all weekend, or hit a county fair or a college campus during the week.
When we get paid by campaigns in other states, there's more time pressure. I find personally that I have to bring food with me, otherwise I will just not eat for most of the day. Staying hydrated is really important for me. We'll often sporadically just grab a bite here, grab a bite there, and be like, have you eaten today? No. What? Eat today? Oh, yeah, I ate three times. If we've had a good day, we'll get Chinese. Or we have a tradition, sushi every successful run or every other long weekend. Half the time I take a shower in the evening. It's seven in the morning mornings and 10 or 11 at night nights, working or socializing pretty much non-stop. So pretty labor intensive for the jobs that pay the bills.
Daphne: When you're in the midst of petitioning long weekends, what would a schedule look like?
June: It is so dependent on each task we have to do. Both me and my colleague Geoff find that we just need breaks. Some days we just wake up and be like, I cannot do this for another day. I'm going to lose my mind. So we'll do touristy things and we'll go to local attractions or go on hikes. I don't usually hike because I'm too tired. He loves going on hikes. Or, you know, have an early night. Or, let's go to this protest this morning and put the day off til lunch.
Daphne: That's so fun. You give people petitions to sign. I'm trying to visualize, what even is a petition? How is it set up? What's it look like? Are people concerned writing down their information? Are you going to sell it? You know, where's my information going?
June: Something I remind people when they ask, our information's everywhere. Everyone already knows it. What we're gathering is exclusively what is on your voter registration. Nothing the government doesn't already have. We absolutely would never sell it. That's tampering with a federal election, and it would be completely unprofitable, two cents for a thousand people's information. There's no reason to do that.
Daphne: Okay, but how is it set up? What's it look like, a petition?
June: They vary state to state. Sometimes there'll be a bunch of boxes, sometimes there'll be a couple. It's a piece of paper with squares for your signature, your full name, and address, which is, I always say, on your voter registration, because that answers the question of, are you going to mail me anything? No, we're not. Some places require your social security number. That one's not so fun. Some places require your date of birth, which is also a little bit harder. But it'll be a page with 10 to 20 rows of little boxes for 10 to 20 people to write things down. Usually we'll be given an informational sheet we have somewhere on the clipboard as well.
Daphne: People looking to join the Kentucky Party, or interested in exploring politics with y'all, a lot of people, Democrats or Republicans, they're like, what if I'm too leftist or I'm too right wing, you know? What does the Kentucky Party stand for? Am I too leftist for the Kentucky Party, June?
June: Earlier when we were chatting, you said the word woke. But I think that's a lovely question. We have this very concrete and polar idea of what people are. And this is me talking a little bit about my personal politics. I very much feel that say, Republicans have a lot more in common with leftists than they might think. Democrats do too. A little bit of political humor on my part. I think in society, we have a lot more in common than we'd ever imagine. If you talk to someone who's like, "ah, them queers are stealing, our libt*rds, rah,” for more than 20 minutes, you'll realize, oh, they don't care if I'm queer as much as they care about some random other issue.
I feel when we actually have real conversations with each other, we realize that we have a lot in common. A lot of us are very community oriented. A lot of us very much care about each other's health and safety and housing. We love each other on a very deep rudimentary human level. When we work together, we understand that great things can happen. From Democrats, from Republicans, from people on the left, or leftists, some would say, I've heard, I wish we didn't lie so much. I wish we were closer, I wish they weren't upset with me for X, Y, Z. It all just boils down to us being people.
I think a very valuable service the Kentucky Party provides is saying, oh, fuck all that. Get that out of here. Let's talk to each other, let's talk real and raw, like people, about the issues we care about. The Kentucky Party is a party for misfits, for riffraff. I think it's an opportunity for people who understand that war is not a viable option to save humanity, for people that understand that money and power is not all that, and is not something that should control our entire lives and systems. If we can agree on those two things, we can sit together and figure the rest out. So yeah.
Daphne: I'm not religious, but amen, brother.
This article, like all original content in The Kentuckian, is released into the public domain. The Kentuckian is an independent publication. It doesn't represent the opinion of the Kentucky Party or any of its committees.