From a press release issued by his campaign comes news that Socialist Party of Michigan chairman Matt Erard has received the nomination of the Green Party of Michigan for the 53rd State House district. Upon filing his paperwork, Erard became the first MI Green on the ballot this cycle:

Erard, who currently serves as the State Chairperson of the Socialist Party of Michigan, the National Ballot Access Coordinator for the Socialist Party’s 2008 presidential ticket of Brian Moore and Stewart Alexander, and the founding organizer of the Michigan Third Parties Coalition, is no stranger to restrictive ballot access laws. Although the nationally-affiliated Socialist Party of Michigan has over a century long history of running candidates across the state, including the past five state elections, it has done so without recognition by the state of Michigan as a ballot qualified party. Michigan’s extraordinarily prohibitive ballot access laws effectively deny minor parties a spot on the ballot in any race in the state if they do not have budgets of many tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a statewide qualifying effort.

Consequently, when Erard was first nominated by the Socialist Party as its candidate for 53rd District State Representative in 2006, he became the first candidate in over thirty years to receive the requisite number of signatures to be nominated for the General Election ballot directly by 53rd District voters. Despite being listed on the ballot as a candidate with “No Party Affiliation,” due to Michigan being among a minority of states that prohibits even independently qualified candidates from listing a party label on the ballot, Erard’s extensive campaigning during the 2006 election still led him to receive the votes of eight-hundred and forty-seven Ann Arbor voters.

Now a dual member of the Socialist Party and the Green Party, which has remained ballot-qualified in Michigan since 2000, Erard sought the Green Party nomination this year, in addition to the nomination of the Socialist Party, in order to build an even more formidable grassroots coalition for 2008 – organized around the complimentary aims and struggles for social equality, civil liberties, peace, ecology, and democracy, which the platforms of both grassroots parties to which he belongs represent.

Erard’s dual candidacy is not unprecedented, as the release notes that candidates with the nomination of both parties have ran under the Green banner since 2002. Erard sees the goals of the SP and GP as complimentary components of his platform, and his website clearly indicates the affiliation with both parties.