A group of voters in Kentucky wants to create a new political party in the Commonwealth. However, according to state law, the group may be striving to create a political organization, not a party.
“We asked everyone if they wanted the Kentucky Party to exist and they said yes,” said Geoff Sebesta with the Kentucky Party. “So, now it exists.”
On Thursday, the group calling themselves the Kentucky Party submitted signatures to put their inaugural presidential candidate, Jill Stein, on the Kentucky ballot. The Green Party has previously selected Stein as its presidential nominee in 2012, 2016, and 2024. Stein also ran unsuccessful third-party campaigns to become Massachusetts’s governor in 2002 and 2010.
During a press conference in the Rotunda on Thursday, Sebesta announced that they believe if Stein receives 2% of the vote in November, “the Kentucky Party becomes an official political party.”
“Legally equal to the Democratic and Republican parties,” said Sebesta.
However, the Secretary of State’s Office pointed LEX 18 to Kentucky law defining a political party as “an affiliation or organization of electors representing a political policy and having a constituted authority for its government and regulation, and whose candidate received at least twenty percent (20%) of the total vote cast at the last preceding election at which presidential electors were voted for.”