[statecom] presidential ballot drawing at 3 p.m.

[Merelice]

Greetings,

By late this afternoon, we will know what our official presidential
primary ballot will look like!

Because of the change in Primary date from early March to early
February, it has been a real scramble to identify our candidates and
submit their names to the Elections Division of the Office of the
Secretary of the Commonwealth by a much earlier deadline. Nat and I
accomplished this at the end of last week.

We are pleased that the names of six candidates will appear on the
Green-Rainbow Party ballot. Their order of appearance will be
determined at a drawing at 3 p.m. today at the Elections Division
Office: One Ashburton Place, Room 1705.

In between the submittal of our party's list of names to be placed on
the ballot and today, we, members of individual campaigns,  and the
elections division have been in detailed, time-consuming discussions
with the elections division to make sure that the Commonwealth
complies with the law and that all of the names we submitted appear on
the ballot.

Also, some of the candidates  whose names we submitted have not
officially announced their candidacy. This is a legal matter related
to federal election law.  In some cases, they
have so called "exploratory" or "draft" campaigns . What is important
for our party rules is that all of the campaigns have been asked and
have  agreed to have their candidate's names placed on our ballot  (a
subtle but important legal distinction).

This is in part because the accelerated primary schedule moved the
deadline from submittal of names of candidates in several states (such
as Massachusetts and California) ahead of the deadline for declaration
of candidacy stipulated by federal election law and the
need of the candidates to remain in compliance with the law regarding
television broadcasts.

We have therefore been asked not to issue a GRP press release at this
time and to allow the individual campaigns to develop and issue their
own when they are prepared to do so. We do anticipate issuing a GRP
press release later this month (around the 20th) and will be
discussing the matter further with Ad Com at the upcoming 12/15
meeting.

We will report the results of this afternoon's drawing.

Your hardworking co-chairs,

Nat and Merelice