State Report 11/14/12

Florida

We're still stagnant, much as we've been for the past year. We've been talking to a few people who are planning on running for office in 2014 about running as Pirates. Hope springs eternal.

Wisconsin

• We are currently writing a constitution for the UW-Madison Pirates. We are basing the constitution on the best elements of the USPP constitution as well as those of the other political organizations on campus. Based on preliminary interest polling, the group will gain members from those who were not formerly part of a political group on campus, thus energizing a new group of voters. We think that by emphasizing the Pirate Party with appeal to a sizeable amount of people at the University.

• The WIPP has made it one of our goals to seek out elected officials and encourage them to sign the Pirate Pledge indicating their support of the three core pirate party values. In pursuit of this goal, we are in the process of scheduling a meeting with senator-elect Tammy Baldwin. We have declared that those who refuse to sign this pledge will, inevitably, be targets of Pirate campaigns.

• In the Wisconsin state assembly where elections are held every two years we will be targeting heavily republican (libertarian leaning) seats that are usually ignored. Of those so far we isolated 8 who are currently (or will be in the next legislative session). Most recently they claimed they wanted to pass a law that would arrest any federal official who would attempt to implement the Affordable Care Act within Wisconsin. Regardless of your feelings towards "ObamaCare" to think that one can simply overstep the supreme court is a bit of a stretch.

For reference these assemblymen are Kris Kapenga, Don Pridemore, Erik Severson, Tom Larson, Scott Krug, Rob Hutton, Mark Born, and Dave Murphy.

Massachusetts

• The Massachusetts Pirate Party had our monthly in-person meeting over the weekend. We decided to do a mailing to our existing member list and include a comprehensive list of everything we are planning in 2013 along with a SASE postcard asking members to check off specific ways in which they are willing to help. We discussed fielding a large number of candidates for local state offices and how to get economies of scale in signature drives and getting candidates on the ballot. We discussed creating videos showing how to do canvassing in a practical nuts-and-bolts way to aid our members in helping with these efforts. And we brainstormed about events to attend and how to duplicate and expand on our success with last year's Pirate Conference this year. We also discussed policy and our plans for extending our platforms to cover the issues that are most important in the minds of voters.