03/12/10 – Christina Tobin – The Scott Horton Show

All right.
On the line with me today, we have Christina Tobin.
She's the co-founder of Free and Equal Elections.
She and Sean Ha are some of the most amazing activists in the U.S. right now.
Christina and Sean have an interesting perspective that the peace issue tends to galvanize voters and work across partisan lines.
And Christina knows a thing or two about working across partisan lines and post-ideology.
Christina, are you here today?
Yes, I am, Angela.
Well, first, I want to just kind of introduce you a little bit to the audience.
You're actually a longtime libertarian activist.
Actually, I'm not a libertarian.
I'm an independent.
I've been involved in electoral reform for over 12 years now, 16 years of age.
So I'm 28 now.
Give us a little bit of an insight in the kind of activism you do currently with Free and Equal.
Well, currently, as the president and chair of the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, which can be found at freeandequal.org, what we do is we lobby.
We're actually a 501c3 group dedicated to election reform and improving ballot access laws across the United States.
So currently, we're working with groups like Oklahomans for Ballot Access Reform, OBAR, that is, to help push HB 1072 through to lower the signature requirements for third parties and independents from 42,000 down to 5,000 signatures.
We're working with the ACLU out in North Carolina and Louisiana, Illinois, California.
So what we do is we fight for electoral ballot access that is nationwide.
And we also put together debate.
We actually put together that debate between Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin in 2008 at the Mayflower that was nationally televised on C-SPAN, the number one archived video of the political season.
So we do lots of things like that.
What issues do Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin have in common?
Oh, well, pretty, pretty simply put, they're both very much against the restrictive ballot access laws that the two-party tyranny, for that matter, has implemented nationwide.
When it comes, of course, to issues like war, I would say not only Nader and Baldwin, but other candidates, presidential, all the presidential candidates for that matter, McKinney and Baldwin, Barr, all did agree on Ron Paul's four points.
And that was, you know, included bringing the American troops home.
So there are a lot of issues these candidates, whether they're far left from the Ralph Nader's to the right of the Ron Paul's, can all agree simply on those issues.
It's interesting that you said that the four, Ron Paul's four points, and it tended to be the independents or the outsider candidates.
What's going on here?
Do you feel those issues are not properly reflected among the two-party candidates?
Definitely not.
I think a friend, an ally of mine by the name of Cindy Sheehan couldn't say it any better.
The duopoly, they aren't a duopoly.
They are the war party.
Do you think through your experiences that there's a, that these ballot access laws are somewhat designed to keep certain rather popular ideas off the table?
Correct.
I mean, even on the grounds of ballot access, GreenEqual has been involved with tea parties.
For example, well, one in particular, last year in Chicago, we held a tea party on Independence Day, July 4th.
And the reason why we got involved with that, the gentleman by the name of Chad Peace of Re-Tea Party contacted us and found out that the Tea Party movement that was Tax Day Tea Party had been pretty much taken over by Newt Gingrich.
So in any case, we came in, we decided to throw that tea party out there.
And the Re-Tea Party crew was so brilliant, they were able to manipulate the search engines to where if somebody typed in Independence Day Tea Party, Re-Tea Party would come above Tax Day Tea Party, the Newt Gingrich movement.
But in any case, what I learned from that tea party, what made it so different from any other one that I know of nationwide is that we had a Green Party candidate speak.
We had the former campaign manager for Ralph Nader, 2004, Teresa Amato, an author of Grand Illusion, as a speaker.
I mean, those are far left-leaning, and they were on the speaker's panel at this tea party that we put together in Chicago.
And again, coming in and representing the people, uniting on all fronts.
But we are tired of the Tea Party, the War Party, that is, the duopoly, aka War Party, not representing the people for what they believe in.
Well, who do you think the War Party represents?
Are these corporate interests?
I definitely agree with that.
They do not represent you, Angela.
They do not represent me, nor the next generation, my younger brother to the college students, to a majority.
They're selfish politicians.
They're greedy, and they need to be knocked out of office.
And in order to do that, the first and foremost thing we need to do is break down these ballot access laws.
And we will do it.
Free and Equal Election Foundation will do it, with the help of many others.
Well, this is very exciting, because one of the things that, in the peace movement, I mean, we don't really have a huge lobby.
Apparently, to some people, they don't believe that peace is profitable, even though we think it's actually ultimately prosperity.
I disagree with those people, to the sense that, yes, we've had kind of like, you know, 20, 30 years.
Richard Winger, a friend of mine at Ballot Access News, you know, it's a bit kind of like, gosh, you know, he's been fighting for so long.
But I've been very excited to hear about this, listening to Kevin Zeese of Voters for Peace, talking about this top level agreement, where he brought together Progressive Review, The Reason Magazine, The Nation, Voters for Peace.
This is an awesome, you know, something that the Free and Equal Election Foundation is very, very excited to hear.
We bring in a very large grassroots movement, the things that we're doing, you know, nationwide, California, Free and Equal Election Foundation, very much against the top two primary.
If that passes Prophecy 2014 in California, that would be detrimental to all of our groups, from the Free and Equal Election Foundation, to anti-war, to Voters for Peace.
So, in any case, uniting an awesome, of course, Kevin Zeese, I know him, because of being the former National Ballot Access Coordinator for Ralph Nader, he is so credible within the Nader campaign.
So, I think he's amazing for what the work that he's done.
But in any case, uniting these efforts from the top level to the grassroots, I think, is a key component into literally breaking history, rattling the system, getting rid of this war party duopoly.
Well, then, you've mentioned some really important people there.
And Kevin Zeese, of course, is a guest here on anti-war radio.
And you were referring to, I guess, people of certain quarreling left, right against the war.
We're taking people from across the spectrum to work together.
Could you, just for a moment, elaborate on what Prop 14 is?
Oh, yes.
Thank you very much.
It's called the Top Two Primary, Proposition 14 in California.
What it is, is only the top two vote-getters of the primary advance to the general election.
Now, the only reason this is on the ballot is because of a Maldonado, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the predator, as far as I'm concerned, a backroom budget deal made last year.
And what it is, basically, as I mentioned before, only the top two vote-getters in the primary advance to general election.
It's Louisiana-style politics.
Horrible.
From 78 to 2006, no incumbents were knocked out of office.
Since it was dropped in 2006, I believe, or I think it's 06, five have been knocked out of office.
More recently, in 2008, in Washington state, for the first time in history, since Washington's been a state, no third party or independent advance to general election, Prop 2 was implemented in 2008.
Only one incumbent was knocked out of office because he ran an unethical campaign.
So, it's horrible.
It would get rid of third parties and independents nationwide, and you can expect that Schwarzenegger in California will be using a lot of corporate money.
You can go on ballot-access, ballot-access-news.org, or ballot-access.org, and see where all that funding is coming from.
But it's a horrible thing.
And if that movement, if that were to pass with the June 2010 initiative, that would rid, of choice, independents, the movement for Ron Paul, Ralph Nader.
If Ron Paul were to speak, which I think he will, for Republican, for GOP, if he doesn't get it in the primary, he may want to run third party independent.
He won't have an opportunity to do that.
The 2012, the movement for the single payer, for Ralph Nader, all of that will be nonexistent.
So, Ralph Nader himself has already come out as against this movement, and if you want to learn more about it, please go to Stop Top 2, that's stoptop2.com, that's stoptop2.com, and you can see that we are taking the lead on stopping this horrible initiative.
And, Christina, for the audience out there before we close, could you tell people where they can find out more about Free and Equal?
Yes, you can go to our website, freeandequal.org.
We are called the Free and Equal Elections Foundation.
We are the real deal, and we plan on breaking down the system and working with groups like yourself.
I'm honored to be on the show today with antiwar.com, and look forward to uniting on all fronts with groups like yourself, to Cindy Sheehan, to everybody, looking forward to seeing in the upcoming months what's going to happen.
And before we go, I just want you to say, if you could do a plug for the most indispensable, for all your ballot access news needs, where can people go?
You can go to freeandequal.org, that's freeandequal.org.
All right, Christina, thank you so much.
All right, that was Christina Tobin with Free and Equal, a name you'll, keep that name in mind, you're going to be hearing a lot more from it.
All right, this is Antiwar Radio, we'll be back in a moment.