Ever since I got a rather nasty self-righteous response from Civitas via Twitter when I inquired about the purpose of a perpetuating a tabloid scandal, I’ve put the John W. Pope Civitas Institute on notice. Today, I checked out what they call statistics regarding voter registration changes in North Carolina:

Check it out here to see what I’m talking about.

I was happy to see the innovation behind this neat little tool, but disappointed that after being a valid registered party in North Carolina for over two years, Civitas refuses to acknowledge that a growing portion of voters are actually Libertarian. I assume this is because they are two lazy to add other parties to their tool should those parties ever overcome the steep barriers to entry for onto the N.C. ballot.

It’s not just in the tool, either. This was the blurb in the Civitas email I got back on July 13, 2011, linking to this tool:
“North Carolina’s voter registration trend that began back in 2009 did not change in the month of June. In all, North Carolina added 7,110 voters; Democrats lost 109 voters, Republicans picked up 1,690 and the Unaffiliated ranks grew by 5,310. Wake County saw the biggest gain adding 319 Democrats, 310 Republicans and 807 Unaffiliated voters to their county voter roster. See which parties gained or lost voters in your county.”

I’ve asked representatives at Civitas in the past why they refuse to acknowledge Libertarians, even though the party is on the ballot, running candidates, and growing in numbers. The response was that the Libertarian Party is not statistically significant enough, being such a small percent of voters. They refused to indicate what threshold a political party had to reach before Civitas would deem it statistically significant.

I find Civitas’ excuse amusing given that in the blurb I quoted above, the organization thought it significant to point out the gains and losses of the Democrats and Republicans in June 2011, each less than 0.001% of their respective total voters. Nowhere did Civitas acknowledge that during that same month, the Libertarian Party added about 260 voters, a growth of 2.34%, during that same time.

I think they also figure since we’ve lost ballot access before, we’ll lose it again, leaving Libertarians back in the precious Unaffiliated slot. In fact, I imagine Civitas is banking on it.

Meanwhile, I’d like to point out the following statistics that Civitas has refused to acknowledge:

  • Since 2008, the Libertarian Party in N.C. has steadily increased its number of registered voters from zero to over 11,000. During that time, the only other block showing any significant change has been the Unaffiliated block, which has grown significantly.
  • The LPNC posts statistics on weekly changes per county at LPNC.org: Click here to see what Civitas isn’t telling you.
  • The LP and LPNC are continually growing and will run yet another slate of candidates in 2012, just as they did in 2008 and 2010.
  • The Independent, which loathes groups like Civitas to its very core, has at least been sensible enough to acknowledge Libertarians in its reporting. For readers who don’t know, the Independent is as notorious for its bias against Republicans as Civitas is for its bias toward them.

I know that I will never be able to convince groups like Civitas, with its deep-seated prejudices and closed-minded assumptions, that people are starting to raise their voices in protest to “the lesser of two evils” in politics. They think that by ignoring us “statistically insignificant” people, we’ll disappear. I can only hope to hasten the day in which we prove them wrong.