Howie Hawkins

Within the last year, election officials and judges in a few key swing states reduced the Green party’s erstwhile ballot access to write-in only. They likely intended to reduce the Greens’ vote share to the benefit of Joe Biden and the Democratic party.Voters in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin might have noticed the unusual absence of the Green party’s presidential ticket from their 2020 ballots. Democrat-controlled courts and Democratic election officials denied Green presidential candidate Howie Hawkins and his VP pick Angela Walker a place on those states’ ballots.

The Green party has nominated Howie Hawkins to the presidency of the United States. But Hawkins’s victory has seemed preordained since he began his campaign. And it has pushed America’s second largest third party further towards the political fringe.A former perennial candidate for New York governor, Hawkins is one of the founders of the Green party, which has only existed since 2001. Previously, the Green party was a decentralized network of state-based parties that would convene to nominate a presidential candidate, such as Ralph Nader in 1996 and 2000.I reported in November that several candidates for the Green nomination protested how the party was tipping the scales in Hawkins’s favor.