Wed, Feb 23, 2000
3rd party votes, but results not binding
Libertarian panel to select candidate
By Jon Kamman
With 91 percent of the precincts counted, Harry Browne of Tennessee had more than 400 of the fewer than 600 votes cast. He beat Californians Larry Hines, who had 75 votes, and David Lynn Hollist, with 48 votes.
That was meaningless to the fraction that a court last month declared in charge of the party statewide. That faction had successfully fought alongside Democrats in 1996 not to hold this type of taxpayer-financed straw poll.
"The election has absolutely no effect. Zero," said Ernest Hancock, chairman of the party in Maricopa County.
Tuesday's vote was sought by a breakaway group of Libertarians who later were ruled not representative of the party as a whole. State officials refused to stop the election.
Arizona has 14,707 registered Libertarians, or 0.7 percent of the state's registered voters.
Hancock said the state party, meeting in Prescott last Saturday, decided that its executive committee of up to 28 members will determine whose name will go on the November general-election ballot in Arizona as the Libertarian presidential candidate.
The nominee might or might not be one of the contenders in Tuesday's election, he said.
The prevailing Libertarian faction's arguments against the election were that the government could not dictate policy to a party on whether the outcome would be binding, and that an election should not be financed by taxpayers if the reuslts were a non-binding popularity poll.