Affiliate Petition Rules Deleted as New Hampshire Replacements Face Off

On August 2, the LNC repealed the rule requiring new state affiliates to form at a meeting open to every party member in the state. Three weeks later, two rival groups aim to replace New Hampshire.

Until August 2, the Policy Manual was specific about how a group becomes a state affiliate of the Libertarian Party. Section 1.05.2 required that:

"The petitioners held a public physical or virtual meeting that was open to all current national Party members at the time notice of an organizing convention was issued residing in the state in which all of those members had an equal voice in adopting bylaws and electing leadership.

Reasonable notice shall be sent to all current national Party members at the time notice of an organizing convention was issued residing in the state and to the LNC Chair and Secretary."

It provided states with an open meeting format, an equal voice, and advance notice to everyone.

Here is what Section 1.05.2 says today, as of the manual's August 20 update:

"Organizations that wish to become state-level affiliate parties shall apply for such status on the petition form in the Appendix. The Secretary or Chair shall forward the request to all LNC members. The LNC or the Executive Committee may, but is not required to, publish the notice via its resources to the potential attendees."

Both requirements from the previous language are gone. It is unclear what is meant by the term "potential attendees".

Motion for replacement.

At the July 5 special meeting, Region 9 Representative Alex Flores moved to replace the section entirely. His version kept notice to the same three parties already required, but it replaced the guarantee that every one of those members would have an equal voice in adopting bylaws and electing leadership with a single line: petitioners could set their own requirements for convention participation. Vice Chair Amanda Griffiths countered with a substitute, but neither passed. Alfa Shaw moved to postpone the whole question to the next meeting, which carried.

On August 2, Griffiths brought the agenda item back, describing it on the floor as giving affiliates more agency when they form and empowering them in conformity with the bylaws. Susan Hogarth objected and suggested that changing the rule while the LPNH disaffiliation appeal was still pending was premature. Alfa Shaw moved to restore substantively the language being struck. His motion failed, and the main motion from Griffiths passed.

The resulting policy.

Under the old rule, a group had to hold a meeting, tell every national member living in that state it was happening, and let all of them vote on the bylaws and the officers. A handful of people could not organize quietly and present the LNC with a finished slate.

Now they can. The form in the Appendix asks for ten signatures and four officer names. Nothing in the current text requires that anyone else in the state was told, invited, or given a vote.

The language that survived closely resembles a separate document tied to Griffiths herself. The "Members' Bylaws", a floor proposal she promoted for the 2026 convention, sets the same bare-bones standard for chartering an affiliate: a petition form and ten signatures. Her own July 5 motion still carried the open-meeting and equal-voice language, but what survived on August 2 more closely matches the document delegates have already voted down.

The timing says a lot. On May 25, the LNC voted to disaffiliate the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, leaving the affiliate seat open. The Judicial Committee upheld the disaffiliation on August 21. The August 2 vote fell between the two, and Chair Evan McMahon said on the floor that it was in order to set the policy before seeking LPNH's replacement.

Two groups, one seat.

Two separate efforts are now claiming New Hampshire, and they do not appear to be working together.

On August 20, thirteen New Hampshire residents signed a petition asking the LNC to charter an affiliate under the old name, Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. Matthew Strong is listed as chair, Dennis Pratt as vice chair, Sean Dempsey as secretary, and Brent Tweed as treasurer.

Pratt has run the Porcupine Freedom Festival and was chair of LPNH's own Judicial Committee as of early 2024. Dempsey sat on the LPNH Executive Committee in 2021. Strong is a longtime Vermont Libertarian Party officer with no New Hampshire record before this petition.

One signature further down the page carries more weight than any of the four officers. Ryan Bloodworth was LPNH's interim chair on November 4, 2024, the meeting where the Executive Committee made Jeremy Kauffman secretary and endorsed Donald Trump for president. LPNH's own appeal calls that period the "Bloodworth era".

The Granite State Libertarian Party held a founding convention on August 31 and elected Rachel (Danner) Blackfyre as chair, with Conrad Nelson, Stephen Villee, and Rich Tomasso filling out its officers.

Danner was also in the room on August 2. While the National Committee moved through to executive session, she talked with Third Party Watch publisher George Phillies about strategy for New Hampshire. Phillies is the same person who published Granite State's founding announcement a month later, naming her as its chair. Its announcement says their executive committee has been authorized to petition the LNC, a step it describes as not yet taken.

That means both efforts were betting on an outcome that wasn't yet decided. Had the JC gone the other way and reinstated LPNH, the LNC would have had a reinstated affiliate and at least one nearly complete petition for the same seat, running straight into the one-per-state cap. Nothing in the current process appears to have anticipated that possibility.

Eleven days of silence.

The one obligation that survived August 2 is that the Secretary or Chair shall forward any petition to all LNC members. This one got tested almost immediately.

Strong emailed his completed petition on August 22 to the Chair's inbox, the Judicial Committee's inbox, the Secretary's inbox, and Secretary Jonathan McGee directly. None of them told the rest of the board.

Region 6 Representative Alfa Shaw was supposed to receive a copy, but Strong sent it to his Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania address instead of his LNC one. A corrected copy reached him on August 28. He waited nearly another week to see whether anyone else would speak up and nobody did. On September 2, he posted the full chain to the public list under the subject line "Why was this withheld?"

Eleven days passed between the petition landing in the Chair's and Secretary's inboxes and the rest of the board hearing about it.

A trademark question.

There is a second issue the deleted rule does not cover. Section 1.14.4 sets the terms for using Libertarian Party trademarks. Groups that are not recognized affiliates may use the name only if they meet four conditions, the last of which reads:

"They do not function as, or hold themselves out as, or register with any entity or election board as, a political party."

Granite State says its petition for affiliate status has not been filed yet, but it is operating, or at least publicly presenting, under the Libertarian Party name.

In Libertarian Nat'l Comm. Inc. v. Saliba, the Sixth Circuit upheld an injunction against a Michigan splinter group for using the party's trademark without authorization, holding that the Lanham Act reaches political speech and that the bylaws create a licensing regime only recognized affiliates may use.

Neither problem has a clear referee. National Bylaws Article 5.2 requires the LNC to charter any organization that meets the ten-signature floor. A separate bylaws provision limits affiliate status to one per state. Nothing in either says what happens when two petitioners clear that floor for the same state at once, which is where New Hampshire stands right now. The open-meeting and notice requirements removed used to function as the practical check against that scenario. On top of this, if members in New Hampshire were not properly notified of either group's organizing meeting, they have no recourse under the current text.

LNC News covers the governance and internal affairs of the Libertarian National Committee. Documentation for the events described here is available on the committee's public list. Submissions can be sent to: LNCnews.submissions@gmail.com.