Barr loses ballot status in Conn. due to bureaucratic failures

A U.S. Federal District Judge yesterday allowed the state of Connecticut to keep Libertarian Presidential Nominee Bob Barr off the November ballot despite Barr meeting the legislative requirements for ballot access.

The Libertarian Party of Connecticut properly submitted over 12,000 signatures to meet the 7,500-signature requirement of the state.

The state miscounted the number of petitions submitted by the Libertarian Party of Connecticut and improperly struck hundreds, if not thousands of voter signatures denying Bob Barr access to the ballot. The administrative mistakes of the state bureaucracy were quickly uncovered.

Judge Janet Hall, based her decision on the inability of the state to quickly reprogram electronic voting machines and reprint machine-readable ballots before the election.

"We are outraged by the decision of Judge Hall. To allow a candidate for the highest national office to be unlawfully excluded from an election because it would inconvenience state workers or interfere with bureaucratic procedures goes beyond the pale," stated Russ Verney, campaign manager for Bob Barr.

Verney continued, "It takes a few days to print good, old paper ballots which served us well for over 100 years. Throw the machines in the river and allow democracy and justice to take precedent over technology. If the state of Connecticut maintains a level of incompetence so great that they cannot print ballots before the election, I encourage them to look to private industry and call Kinkos."

Libertarian Party Presidential Nominee Bob Barr's name will appear before 95% of Americans when the vote on Election Day – more than any other third-party or independent candidate.