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Libertarian Greg Tlapek is running for the District 147 seat in the Missouri House of Representatives once again.

Tlapek has been involved with the Libertarian party going back to the 1980s and ran his first political race in 1994. Most recently, Tlapek ran for the District 147 seat in 2022, pulling 4.1% of the vote. Republican candidate John Voss won the race, receiving 64.5%, while Democratic candidate Andy Leighton received 31.4%.

Before the 2022 race, Tlapek ran for the District 147 seat in 2014 and 2016, losing both races to then-incumbent Kathy Swan. Despite falling short in multiple elections, Tlapek remains upbeat about his position.

"I've been in this a long time, and what my experience has taught me is to be happy and accept that people who don't agree with you politically, they're not bad people," Tlapek said. "Virtually everyone wants the world to be a better place. We just have different ways of getting there."

While he said he feels the election will be a foregone conclusion with incumbent Voss likely winning in a landslide, Tlapek said he is hopeful that running as a third-party candidate can open up the political process to other parties.

"I'm mostly interested in the state Legislature and improving the political process," Tlapek said about his candidacy. "I really do think that we would benefit from having a multiparty system, and Missouri is the perfect state to do it in because we have such a large house with 163 seats. It would be about making people's vote count."

Tlapek continues to run on the same platforms he has run on for quite some time -- education reform through a 1% reduction in sales tax and a scaled tuition program for public schools, health care deregulation and moving toward a free-market approach and election reform through the use of proportional representation.

"(Missouri) is the place to do what's called proportional representation, and I would love to help shepherd that discussion," Tlapek said. "Most counties just haven't done it right. They still make it so you've got to have a threshold that keeps a lot of people unrepresented. If we get that threshold down to where all you need is 6/10 of one Senate vote, you can have a representative. Then, everybody in Missouri can truly feel like their vote counts.

"Honestly, I do think that if you went back and you get the numbers from the last from the last few elections, I think you would find that if you totaled up all the votes, the Democrats got in the state House races and all the votes and Republicans got in the state House races and then you assign seats based on that, Republicans probably are over-represented by about seven seats. It's not a huge difference," Tlapek said. "I see why they don't want to give up those seven seats, but it really eliminates the whole gerrymandering problem. There are no more state legislative district maps that have to be drawn and gerrymandered to favor the political party that was in power when the maps were being drawn. It eliminates that whole problem. This is a better way for us to get the cream of the crop in there."

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Libertarian Greg Tlapek provides alternative choice in District 147 House race - Southeast Missourian