Ballot access hurdles

I've written before about the sort of electoral reforms we should push for to make third parties (and any sort of moderate slate) viable. Whether you support a third-party candidate or or a confirmed Democrat or Republican, fixing these problems shouldn't be controversial: it's a simple matter of fairness in most cases.

One thing I left out of the earlier post was specific examples of ballot-access problems.

For example, here in Minnesota, getting a new party on the ballot requires gathering signatures equivalent to 5 percent of the vote in the last statewide election. For 2008, that means 110,000 signatures. There's a reason no party has ever been recognized using this method since the law was enacted in 1913.

Instead, most third parties run not as a party but as a bunch of independent candidates, who only need 2,000 signatures each -- though they only have two weeks in which to do it. Then they hope that one of their candidates nets 5 percent of the vote, which entitles them to "major party" status the next time around.

At least Minnesota has a back-door option. In many states, such as Tennessee, not only do you need to collect a whole bunch of signatures, but once you get on you don't get your party name listed. Anyone who isn't a Democrat or a Republican is labeled simply "independent."

In Texas, you wait until after that year's state primary elections to start collecting signatures, and then you have 60 days to collect signatures of registered voters equivalent to 1 percent of the vote total in the last election. However, to be an independent candidate you cannot have participated in those primary elections -- either as a voter or a candidate -- and nobody who signs your petition can have done that, either. So in order to get on the ballot, both you and your signatories are locked out of the regular election process that year.

It's not like these are simply old laws that have never been updated. In the current session of Congress there's a campaign financing bill, S936, that has been co-sponsored by Arlen Specter and Richard Durbin. It sets up a public campaign-financing fund for Senate candidates that receive a certain amount of tiny ($5, to be exact) donations. The ostensible purpose is to make it easier for nonincumbents and independent candidates to run for office.

However, Democrats and Republicans need 2,000 such donations. Everybody else needs 3,000.

(To check for yourself, go to Thomas.gov and search for "S936". Then scroll down to Section 505 and read Subsection (b).)

Beyond that you have the usual travails of minor-party candidates: not getting media coverage, not getting invited to participate in debates, etc.

Most of those side effects are market-driven and not properly addressed by legislation. But ballot access is another matter. States have a legitimate interest in setting reasonable requirements to getting on the ballot, to weed out crackpots and prevent ballots from being hundreds of names long. But it's manifestly clear that the current limits go way beyond reasonable. And once on the ballot, candidates should be able to identify themselves by party name and enjoy all the othe benefits afforded their major-party rivals.

Then there's the biggie: the winner-take-all nature of our elections, which encourages people to choose the least objectionable major-party candidate rather than take a chance on a third-party contender. Getting on the ballot is the first step; passing instant-runoff voting is the second.

Again, whatever your political stripe, you should support these efforts. There are some technical hurdles to be overcome, but philosophically we should agree that election laws should treat all candidates equally, and encourage people to vote for the person that best reflects their viewpoint, not try to game a system rigged to favor the two major parties.

ballot access, elections, politics, midtopia