Emperor's Rants and Observations

4. Make ballot access the same for every candidate for office. Nomination by petition with 1% of the registered voters in the election district the candidate is running for.

When a candidate files for office as a candidate representing a recognized political party, they just submit a form and financial disclosure and they are on the primary ballot. A recognized political party is based on the percentage of votes that they received in the previous election.

A candidate of a non-recognized party or NO PARTY affiliation must collect a number of signatures of registered voters in their election district. That will get them on the general election ballot but not the primary ballot

This gives candidates of recognized political parties a clear and unfair advantage over those candidates not allowed on the primary ballot. During the primary campaigns candidates are able to raise campaign contributions, gather supporters, appear in forums, participate in debates, and generally raise awareness of their candidacy.

Party affiliation should have no bearing on ballot access. Neither the US Constitution nor the Alaska Constitution (haven’t researched other states) mention political parties, or primary elections for that matter.

The “two party system” is only perpetuated by excluding others as much as possible from gaining equal access to ballot.

Resources:
Ballot Access News
Coalition For Free and Open Elections
Freedom Ballot Access

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Campaign Finance, Election Reform, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.