On June 2nd, our campaign submitted 535 valid signatures from supportive residents in our district, along with roughly 40 additional signatures that were either incomplete or belonged to people who lived along outside edges of the district and didn’t realize they were outside it.

The local office took less than two hours to review all of the signatures and invalidated more than 50 due to handwriting issues or in-line corrections. Then they removed my independent candidate’s application for the State House.

The state’s form is very clear that my volunteers and I could absolutely not fill out any portion for a person unless they had a legal disability and specifically requested our help. One clerk even told us “that she understood the intent of the signatures, but the ones they removed could be interpreted in a way that makes them invalid.”

Since then my campaign has looked into how this clerical choice could be corrected. It’s simply unfathomable that our system is designed to allow a single decision-maker to cast aside the will of so many voters and prevent office-seekers from serving their communities with no means of timely appeal.

And yet that system is the reality:  After speaking with several local attorneys and law firms that specialize in dealing with our state government, the consensus is we have a very strong and winnable case. Unfortunately there is no “fast track” so, pursuit of such a victory would take until next year and cost tens of thousands of campaign dollars while making no difference in the current election cycle.

We also seriously considered a write-in campaign for this November, but ultimately realized that the time crunch, financial hurdles, and mountain of volunteer hours necessary are all too imposing to make this a viable option for our district in this particular election.

We are not done.

To everyone who met me and heard me say “It’s our government and it should be working for us,” that has not changed. We will just be adjusting our approach and timeline to make our government by the people and for the people again. For this election in November, I encourage everyone to look past party tags to listen to what the candidates are saying and look at what they have already done for our communities. We need to stop empowering parties by voting along a line, instead we need to give each candidate the opportunity to win our vote with who they are and what they stand for.

The old ways have not worked, and the politics of our parents’ generation has failed us. As we move forward, we must do it differently so that we can build a system which actually benefits our communities, one that holds true to the ideals that our government is by the people and for the people.

If you want to help change our world for the better, reach out and join us: No one is coming to fix our system, we need to come together and do it for ourselves, but when we work together, we can better our government so that it serves the needs of the people, not the whims of the rich.