Long-time Georgia LP Member Mark Mosley writes us:
The Georgia Dissent
Dissent is in the air in Georgia
The LP of Georgia held its annual convention on March 8 2025 and the Dissent team was out in force. Our intent was, and is, to challenge the existing leadership and take the first steps toward changing the misguided direction of the LPGa. Specifically, we have grown weary of the “take over and dominate” mentality of the current leadership and intend to challenge, and rebuild, the LPGa that was once openly inviting. warm and magnanimous to all sincere libertarians.
It was a good day for Dissent.
At the beginning of the convention nothing was certain except our intent, and determination. We believed that our team was about half of the convention attendance, and we were correct.
The LPGa Chair was up for election, we took a risk and ran Chase Oliver, the LP’s most recent Presidential candidate. It was expected that this would stir up a hornet’s nest and it did exactly that. In the end Chase lost in a very close election (Gerred Bell 50, Chase Oliver 47). Though Chase nominally lost, this revealed much about our floor strength. As always Chase was a class act and would go on to take an Executive Committee position later in the convention.
The LPGa Treasurer was also up for election and in a series of complicated moves our candidate ended up being Doug Craig, a long time LPGa mainstay with lengthy and impeccable experience in the LPGa. Doug was the only candidate. Interestingly, the opposition attempted, and failed, to NOTA him as they did Chase at the National convention. (Doug Craig 66, NOTA 31).
The Dissent team would go on to take a majority of the district and at-large Executive Committee positions.
Additionally, we defeated a move to reduce the size of the Executive Committee by about one third, a foolhardy and dangerous change.
The LP of Georgia is now set up to move in a meaningful, positive, direction.
The Georgia Dissent grows.
LP Georgia after years of litigation efforts lost their ballot access with the poor showing of Chase Oliver in his home state last November. Why double-down on ineffectiveness? I don’t get it.
For the record:
The LP of Georgia has lost its statewide ballot access specifically, and precisely, because of litigation that arose on July 14 2020. The complaint, Rose v. Raffensperger, was not directed at the LPGa but had to do with the how the PSC elections are structured in Georgia and eventually led to a complex series of decisions that would eventually cancel three Public Service Commissioner elections in 2022 and 2024. The Presidential election years are not when most of the statewide offices are contested in Georgia and the PSC elections, because they are staggered, are the only statewide races available in those years. We have successfully relied on the PSC elections since 1988 to carry our statewide ballot access in the Presidential election years. The consequences of the litigation forced us into relying on the 2024 Presidential race for our ballot access vote, a place we’ve never been before. It was known in advance this was a very steep mountain to climb. You can get more detail about this situation here, https://bedrockballotaccess.com/index.php?what_happened. (Please pardon the expired certificate, it will be resolved soon)
This has nothing to do with Chase Oliver and his campaign.
Beyond clarifying the specific facts involved, there is no reason to pay attention to those who hide behind online monikers.
It is not relevant to our decisions, or our actions, that you “get it”.
The Georgia Dissent grows
Wouldn’t they have kept ballot access had Oliver received just 1% of the vote?
No, the Georgia Election Code specifies 1% of the Registered voters, this translates into about 2% of the actual votes cast as only about 50% of the Registered voters actually vote, In Georgia there are about 8M registered voters, requiring 80k votes, which is 2% of 4M actual votes cast. The 2% is what you see on the news reports.
We have routinely met these numbers for almost any Georgia statewide race and especially for PSC races where we typically earn 3% plus. The complete history of our statewide vote totals is here, https://bedrockballotaccess.com/index.php?election_history=all (Apologies for the absence of the Chase numbers, they are about 20,000 of 4m votes cast)
A notable aside, in the 2022 Georgia General Election Chase Oliver was our US Senate candidate in the very publicized three way election with Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock. He earned enough votes to carry our ballot access, 2.07%, as well as throw the race into a runoff. For those of us who seek to know the facts, Chase earns our respect many times over.
Congratulations and best wishes for continued success!