By JIM BARON

WARWICK — Having collected just under 34,000 petition signatures in the space of two months, it may almost be time for Ken Block to have a party.

Block, the prime mover behind the effort to establish the Moderate Party of Rhode Island, delivered the signatures — 33,998 of them, on 3,103 sheets of legal-sized paper — to the Rhode Island Board of Elections yesterday.
Counters there made sure he had at least the 23,389 names that would need to be certified for the Moderate Party to qualify as an official political party for ballot access and fundraising purposes, then Block took them back to distribute them among the boards of canvassers in each of the state’s 39 cities and towns to get official certification.
The 85 people who collected signatures — 13 were paid professionals earning $1.50 a name, the rest were volunteers — gathered more than 10,000 over the number required by law to establish the party, expecting that many of them would be rejected for a variety of reasons by the various canvassing boards in each community.
“We can absorb a 30 percent loss,” Block boasted as he stood beside a long folding table whose top was completely covered by petitions.
While he boasts at the “monumental” achievement of gathering all those names in so short a time overcoming the 12th highest threshold in the nation for a new political party to establish itself, during what he calls “the rainiest summer on record,” Block acknowledges that, “The ironic thing about this who effort is that it proves nothing.
“It does not prove we are a viable political party,” he told The Times “It doesn’t prove that we can raise money. It doesn’t mean we can recruit candidates and most importantly, it doesn’t prove we can get them elected. It proves we can collect a boatload of signatures.
“There are better ways for an organization to become a viable political party,” Block said, suggesting that one way would be for it to bring 20 candidates forward to run for seats in the General Assembly.
The General Assembly is Block’s target. It is why he mounted a court challenge to a state law that would have prevented him from even starting to collect his signatures until next January to qualifates forward to run for seats in the General Assembly.
The General Assembly is Block’s target. It is why he mounted a court challenge to a state law that would have prevented him from even starting to collect his signatures until next January to qualify for the 2010 election.
With the help of attorneys provided by the ACLU, Block asked a U.S. District Court judge to find the number of signatures required to establish a new party – 5 percent of the total vote for president in the last election – unconstitutional, along with the requirement that signature gathering could not start until January of the election year.
Judge William Smith split the baby – he upheld the requirement for the number of signatures, but ruled unconstitutional the provision that signature gathering could not start until January.
Time is of the essence, Block insists.
“We need to be able to raise money as a political party,” he said. “We will have a huge financial hardship if we don’t get certified” before the end of this year, he said. “We will miss out on the limits of raising money for party building and for supporting candidates. To miss out on a calendar year of contributions is monumental in terms of raising money.
That is why he wants to see the boards of canvassers move quickly to certify the signatures, noting that there are no laws or regulations to dictate how that process will operate.
“The entrenched powers have every incentive to drag this out,” the Barrington resident said, adding, “we are ready to run back to court if we have to (in order) to ensure this process is completed as quickly as possible.
“If you are in power, it is easier to keep your seat if no one runs against you, or if someone does, that they are financially handicapped.
If the Moderate Party of RI does gain recognition as an official party, it must run a candidate for governor in 2010 who wins at least 5 percent of the vote to maintain that status. There is no candidate as yet – former Republican Attorney General Arlene Violet, a friend of Block’s, is frequently mentioned as a possibility – Block says he will run himself “if push comes to shove.
“I can guarantee you, this won’t happen again,” he said, pointing to the tableful of petitions sitting in front of him.
Block who is a software engineer in his day job, suggests the Internet has changed our society in a way that it makes face-to-face petitioning more difficult. “There has been such a sea change in how we interact with people.”
The only way to get the signatures on paper is talking to strangers face-to-face, he said, and people do not seem as open to that as they used to be. He suggested it would have been far easier to gather all the signatures he needed over the Internet, but the law does not currently allow for that.
He noted that many of the folks who signed his position said, “it’s about time,” a new party stepped forward in Rhode Island. “About 70 per cent of the people said, ‘I don’t believe the political system works for us.’”
An also large number of the people he talked to, Block recalled, told him “we love what you are doing, but we don’t sign anything.”
Block says that so far at least a half dozen potential General Assembly candidates have told him, ‘“if you don’t already have someone in my district, I’ll do it.’ That’s the only way you can do this, to get competent people to run for office. We want reluctant leaders. They could be the most effective leaders that this time, someone who says ‘I’m doing this because it is necessary, this is not a career for me.’”