[SfN] GREAT DAY in Springfield!

[Jim Buell]

The Greens did a fantastic job of beating back the Dem challenges to 
getting Nader on the Illinois ballot today - out of 1,400 downstate 
signatures challenged in Springfield, election judges overruled nearly 800, 
for a success rate of nearly 60 percent! According to the best figures we 
have right now, that means we're looking at a total of over 27,000 good 
signatures! (Either unchallenged or with the challenges overruled by 
election judges). And that's not counting the continuing action in Chicago 
and surrounding counties today.

We won't know for sure until a hearing on Tuesday, but it's looking very 
much as if we've succeeded in getting Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke on the 
Illinois ballot! To beat us, it looks like the Dem challengers would have 
to somehow overturn rulings for well over 2,000 signatures - and we just 
don't think that's gonna happen, even in the land of the Chicago machine.

Best of all, we finished our work in plenty of time to rally as 
Billionaires for Bush or Gore on the statehouse steps and in the rotunda. 
It was a wonderful little action with participation from the Prairie 
Greens, Springfield Greens and Chicago Greens. So what if we were few in 
number? In this land of wealth for votes, we were seven billion strong! We 
also got some very nice media attention from the Springfield and Decatur 
dailies and several area radio stations.

Special thanks to Matt M and Tim G, who went over with me to the challenge 
at the ungodly hour of 6:30 this morning, and to Laurel P. The 4 of us 
actually outnumbered the Springfield Greens who were able to take part - 
with Rita B from Chicago coming down to help out, we juuuust baaarely had 
enough people to defend the eight desks where the election judges were 
going over the signatures.

Folks, it was definitely touch and go today, and we survived and thrived. 
One of these days we're gonna sincerely have to thank the Dems for making 
us stronger. For now, we can just celebrate.

BTW, we did a little videotaping of the statehouse event - I'll try to have 
some clips up in RealAudio format in a day or two - highly entertaining! 
The local Billionaires may just have to do an encore engagement as part of 
the street theater during next Tuesday's 9/26 events.

Cheers, all, and don't forget to flip to CSPAN tonight (at 8 Central, as it 
turns out) for the 2-hour Minneapolis rally, live in its entirety!

GO WE GO!
Jim