Thursday, 02 November 2000
.....
We no longer have vigorous and active third parties because Democratic and Republican state legislatures passed restrictive laws that make it exceedingly difficult for third parties to get on the ballot in many states. These laws usually require third parties to gather signatures for a petition to be on the state ballot, and they often place strict deadlines for gathering such signatures.
These restrictions did not emerge overnight. From 1888 to 1931, ballot-access laws were rather mild. In 1924, only 50,000 signatures on a petition were required to place a new party on the ballot in 48 states (a figure that represents 0.15% of the number of people who had voted in the previous election). During the 1930s, ballot-access laws became significantly restrictive, as they required new parties to gather more signatures and file for application earlier and earlier in the campaign year. Still, it was not until the 1960s that compliance with ballot-access laws became extremely difficult. -- Richard Winger, The Importance of Ballot Access
In contemplating the debate over a vote for Nader being a wasted vote, I've been struck by the fact that the Loyal Liberals completely ignore the enormous amount of work put into getting Nader on the ballot in 44 states and DC. That is a serious amount of work which is simply wasted if Nader withdraws from the race. Alas, he is not on the ballot where I'm voting (North Carolina) and, unlike four other states, North Carolina won't even count our write in votes. (sigh)
Now, clearly, the ballot access laws are designed to kill third parties and restrict democratic activity. Just as clearly, they are very effective at achieving these goals. So, let's turn it around. Most everyone agrees (at least in public) that big money and corporate influence over our government is a bad thing, especially to the degree we've seen in recent years. Since corporations and industry councils and lobbying groups and firms don't have any inherent right of access to the levers of power, why make it easy for them? It should be just as difficult or, better yet, much more difficult for a group to get access to our (for example) legislatures than to our ballots. We may well want to distinguish professional from non-profit from citizen groups and all these from individual citizens. But that's fine and not difficult to do using existing mechanisms.
Heck, while we're at it, let's put a steeply graduated tax on campaign and other political donations, say: nothing on donations up to $200, 25% on donations from $201 to $500, 50% on donations from $501 to $750, and 100% on donations from $751 to $1000. In fact, just keep jacking it up as the donations get bigger. The money collected could go to funding other candidates or voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives.
If every industry group or lobbying firm had to secure, oh, 60,000 voter signatures from each state every five years as a condition of their being allowed to lobby government officials (or run TV or radio political ads) then the position of the citizen in our governmental deliberations would be restored to its proper place.
The center.
See also Gored Liberals, Wasted Votes, and Selling Out <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/702>
This is A Modest Proposal <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/704>