Counterpoint: For Grassroots, future can wait. Victory is sweet.

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Jennifer Brooks asks what's next for the Grassroots Party and the Legal Marijuana Now Party ("After law, what's next for state's pot parties?" May 10). If DFL legislators pass a bill to legalize commercial cannabis this year, wouldn't that render the Legal Marijuana Now Party superfluous?

State law bestows "automatic ballot access" on the Legal Marijuana party through the 2024 general election. Ironically, this hands a potent weapon of mischief to political conspirators who have found the Legal Marijuana Now leaders willing to collaborate to boost Republican (prohibitionist) candidates and kneecap pro-legalization (DFL) candidates.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "Wherever the truth is injured, defend it!"

That's the Grassroots credo, and here's "the rest of the story."

Since 1986, dozens of Grassroots candidates have run symbolic campaigns for office to protest the bipartisan "war on drugs" — which we always saw as a war on people. We put our names on the ballot as an indirect electoral strategy, since Minnesota doesn't allow direct popular lawmaking by citizen-initiated ballot measures, and because legalization advocates were clearly unwelcome in either the DFL or Republican parties.

A Grassroots spinoff, called Legal Marijuana Now, caught on with voters in 2014.

Minor-party candidates in Minnesota must collect thousands of signatures on nominating petitions in order to earn a place on the ballot. In November 2018, nominees of both legalization parties polled over 5% statewide — catapulting the two groups up to classification as major parties.

Major-party status means that a party has automatic ballot status. No nominating petitions are required. In practical terms, it means that almost anybody can buy their way onto any party's ballot line, merely by paying modest filing fees and signing (even in bad faith) affidavits of candidacy.

Minor-party petitioning for ballot access is a tough task — but it weeds out fakers, fools and finks. In contrast, casually buying a spot on the ballot entices vanity candidates, cranks and deliberate "spoilers" posing as major-party candidates. This is a glaring flaw in Minnesota election law. More than mere temptation, it's virtually an incitement to fraud.

Despite their eye-opening vote totals, the "pot parties" were organizationally negligible, having fewer than two dozen active members. Consequently, unscrupulous Republicans and unethical opportunists proceeded to file fraudulent affidavits, intent on deceiving the voters, discrediting the two new major parties and betraying those parties' principles.

Major-party status made both protest parties vulnerable to this corruption, nearly destroying the Grassroots Party and perverting the Legal Marijuana Now Party so that many of its nominees aided and abetted prohibitionist Republicans and imperiled pro-legalization Democrats.

The Legal Marijuana Now Party's corruption has been convincingly documented, primarily by the Minnesota Reformer, but also by Channel 9, the Associated Press, and by Star Tribune reporters, among others. Also, in 2022 some rogue DFL elements formed a cabal to wreck the Grassroots Party, and almost succeeded.

We've spoken out for common sense on cannabis since the 1980s. Within a few years of our founding, the Star Tribune's Editorial Board declared that, "Another potential solution that should be on the table is legalization" (Nov. 19, 1992). Then, in 1998, Reform Party dark horse Jesse Ventura was elected governor as an anti-prohibition candidate. But still nearly all of Minnesota's career politicians clung stubbornly to "reefer madness."

Grassroots agitators persevered.

The Grassroots Party's future might involve continuing in its current status as a legally recognized minor party. Its dauntless volunteers already have 4,000 names signed onto a petition to President Joe Biden demanding repeal of federal cannabis prohibition. And if Minnesota's proposed law passes, the Grassroots Party has constructive suggestions for making the law more workable, reasonable and constitutional.

I salute DFL lawmakers who finally understood that cannabis prohibition never was necessary; always was unjust and unjustifiable; and always lacked moral authority because it was actually designed to serve as a legal mechanism for racial repression.

I hope that one day soon, Sen. Lindsey Port's and Rep. Zack Stephenson's bill lands on Gov. Tim Walz's desk. That would fulfill Victor Hugo's stirring epigram:

"Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come."

Oliver Steinberg, St. Paul, is chairman and founder, Grassroots — Legalize Cannabis Party.