With the election coming in November, one grassroots candidate filed with the North Carolina State Board of Elections to be on the ballot in the Senate race.
Matthew Hoh represents the Green Party, an unrecognized political party in North Carolina as of the 2020 election.
The Green Party was first recognized in North Carolina in March 2018 with 3,600 members statewide, with the Constitution Party following in June 2018 with 4,600 members. Both parties failed to secure 2% of the total votes in 2020 to ensure future ballot representation without a petition.
To be a Green Party candidate, the State Board of Elections’ statute says it requires “petitions for the formulation of a new political party, which are signed by registered and qualified voters in this State equal in number to one-quarter of one percent (0.25%) of the total number of voters who voted in the most recent general election for Governor. Also the petition must be signed by at least 200 registered voters from each of three congressional districts in North Carolina.”
Hoh secured almost 22,000 signatures across 96 of North Carolina’s 100 counties.
It’s “the first time since its founding that the North Carolina Green Party qualified for the ballot through running a successful petition drive,” according to Hoh’s press release.
It was required the party file the petitions for the board of elections’ certification by June 1.
Hoh is a disabled Marine Corps combat veteran, who resigned in 2009 with the State Department in Afghanistan. He believes in cutting down in political corruption by ending gerrymandering, implementing rank-choice voting, abolishing electoral college, enacting term limits for Congress, among other issues.
“North Carolina now has a party and a candidate for U.S. Senate who supports Medicare For All, student and medical debt cancellation, affordable housing, an end to the war on drugs, universal higher education, a Green New Deal, living wages, and other progressive policies that benefit the working people of North Carolina,” Hoh said in the release.
He points to a Gallup poll from 2021 that showed 62% of U.S. adults suggested a third party was needed as part the U.S. political system. The numbers were in the 60 percentile range in 2013, 2015 and 2017, and most recently showed a record-high 63% of Republicans desired a third party.
“I’m running for the U.S. Senate to give the people of North Carolina someone to vote for who represents them, their families and their neighborhoods, and who isn’t beholden to the big money that controls our elections,” Hoh continued in the release. “Now it’s time to be a voice for millions of North Carolinians and disrupt the political status quo that has been deadly, oppressive and limiting to so many American families.”
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