Board of Regents Chairman Robert Flanders talks to the MPRI!

If you haven't heard by now, the Moderate Party of Rhode Island (MPRI) has won it's lawsuit against the state of Rhode Island. US District Court Judge William Smith agreed with MPRI Chairman Ken Block and his ACLU volunteer attorney Mark Reel that Rhode Island's requirement that new political parties not begin the petitioning process until the first day of an election year was an unconstitutional violation of the freedom to assemble, and struck down that requirement.

Now we've got our party, so to speak, if we can keep it.

Now we have to collect, according to the Projo article of May 30, 23,588 valid, Board of Canvassers-approved signatures to qualify as a recognized political party, and receive all of the fiscal benefits that come with that status (details are outlined on the MPRI website here). Doing this will not be easy. It will require a concerted effort by Moderates to organize and conduct a sophisticated canvassing operation in neighborhoods all across the state.

At Ken's presentation to the CCRI Political Science Club in April, he made it pretty clear that not every signature recorded will be accepted as valid with local Boards of Canvassers, which vary in requirements and (sadly) ideological inclinations from town to town. As I understand it, we should not be surprised to see up to 50% of signatures rejected for pedantic or political reasons. Therefore we're actually looking at an effort to collect close to 50,000 names in the next year.

This is all made more urgent by the coming election and Rhode Island's fiscal crisis. As North Providence flirts with insolvency, the Moderate Party, which may soon be the strongest voice for reform in the state, is rushing to collect signatures while the established parties invest in candidates. We are behind.

So what do we do? The word from Margaret Paynich, who is coordinating canvassing plans, is that the canvass will begin ASAP, after the fundraiser of Monday, June 15 (which you all are, of course, attending).

I am currently employed as a canvasser, and am studying the art and science of canvassing. Since there is no precedent for what the MPRI is doing, the metrics are unknown. How many signatures will the average canvasser be able to collect in four hours? How many of those will be acceptable with Boards of Canvassers? How many canvassers will we need? How long will it take?

Strangely enough, filing a lawsuit to change state law, winning that lawsuit, and having the law rendered unconstitutional seems to have been the least labor-intensive step in forming a political party. When V.I. Lenin did it in Russia 100 years ago, he just had Stalin and his friends rob some banks for financing. It's a little different for committed Moderates today.

What do you think?