TV Channel 2, the Wilmington News Journal, and WILM-AM news radio sent reporters. Inglee and Hawkins described the socialist platform and fight to win ballot status. Rebecca Arenson and David Colton, the other two electors for the socialist ticket, also took part in the press conference. Colton is chief negotiator for the union of professors at the University of Delaware.

More than 500 Delawareans registered SWP over the last month to put the party on the ballot, nearly twice the state requirement.

“Delaware state officials have told us they intend to challenge our right to be on the ballot,” Inglee told the press. “They say they are refusing to honor the wishes of 292 of the people who registered Socialist Workers, the overwhelming majority because they were already registered.

Delaware election commissioner Frank Calio said the state will not count the signatures of 55 people who were previously registered ‘independent’ and signed to change their registration to SWP, the News Journal reported. State officials had previously declared a March-September “moratorium” on voters changing their party registration. “‘Independent’ is a choice, and we consider that the same as a party,” said Calio.

Inglee said that if the socialists’ right to be on the 2004 ballot is challenged, the campaign would fight the undemocratic exclusion politically and legally.

A number of people from Delaware sent statements to the press expressing solidarity with the SWP ballot effort here. They include Sally Milberry-Steen, a leader of the peace group Pacem in Terris, and Gregory Chute, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Newark.

After the press conference, the socialists drove to Dover, the state capitol, where election officials accepted the socialist candidates’ slate of electors.  
 
 
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