by Tom Howe, LPNC Press Secretary

Fairness and justice are not to be found in North Carolina politics. This must be the opinion of the more than one million NC voters who register as "unafilliated" and the roughly half of NC citizens who regularly don't vote. Thus a half dozen of North Carolina public interest and political groups have joined together to form the Open Elections Coalition. OEC will work to reform the draconian ballot access barriers in NC, which rank among the worst three in the U.S.A.

Founding members of the coaliton are Common Cause NC, Democracy NC, Libertarian Party of NC, NC Constitution Party, NC Green Party, and the NC Public Interest Research Group.

Phil Jacobson, chairman of this state's Libertarian Party, announced his party's participation saying, "the original bill would have brought our state into parity with most other states in America." "Now," he added, "we must focus on the senate's efforts to restore the fairness that the bill was named for."

The only third party to regularly achieve ballot access in North Carolina, the Libertarians, often spent nine months and $100,000 on the effort. No third party or independent candidate has ever met the current signature requirement without the use of professional petitioners.

There will be a public Forum, "Left Out and Kept Out," A discussion of North Carolina's restrictive ballot access laws at 7 p.m., Monday, June 26 in Founder's Hall, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh,3313 Wade Avenue, Raleigh. Citizens who support electoral fairness for NC that is at least as good as that of Iraq can sign the Open Elections Petition online.

The coalition also has a website: http://www.ncopenelections.org/.