MONTPELIER, Vt. — Dennis Richter, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. vice president, center rear, joined several campaign supporters at the Capitol here July 16 to file 1,138 certified signatures to place Rachele Fruit, the party’s presidential candidate, and himself on the 2024 ballot.
Richter and campaign supporters had fanned out across the state, from Newport to Bennington, talking to working people at grocery stores, farmers markets and on their doorsteps. Richter met with the party’s three presidential electors, one in a small town near the Canadian border, another on a farm in central Vermont, and the third, a retired unionist, in a southernmost corner of the state. Campaigners collected signatures from voters in almost every one of some 250 cities and towns in Vermont.
“We got a good response to our working-class program,” Richter said. “None of the capitalist candidates — Biden, Trump, Kennedy or any other — are capable of dealing with the social and economic crisis facing workers, not to mention the growing danger of more wars. We talked to workers across Vermont about the need for working people to make a complete break, a class break, from the bosses’ parties. We need to build a party of labor to lead working people in their tens of millions to fight all year round defending our class interests.
“It can chart a course for the working class — the vast majority — to take political power into our own hands and join with fellow workers worldwide to build a new world.”
The state of Vermont requires 1,000 valid signatures on nominating petitions to be placed on the ballot. Prior to submitting the signatures to the state, town clerks certify signatures from their towns. Once more than enough signatures out of the 1,917 total gathered were validated, Richter and campaign organizers filed with the state.