Election by Litigation

Reflecting on the forced exclusion of Libertarian Party candidate Eric Sundwall from the ballot in the upcoming election in New York's 20th Congressional District, the Think 3 Institute ironically suggests the idea of eliminating ballots altogether as a way of countering the 'bipolarchy':

Our electoral system is designed to encourage party-line voting, and the laws exist to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to challenge the reigning Bipolarchy of Republicans and Democrats. Our legislators may as well be Iranian mullahs, given their power to exclude independents from the sacred ballot. Lip service is paid to the principle of write-in voting, but the ballot certifies certain candidates as the "real" ones while implicitly relegating the rest to second class or worse. But if we really want to honor the principle, and if ballot space is so limited that there have to be laws to limit access, the fair thing to do is level the playing field and eliminate ballots altogether. Let's have every name written in, or spoken in if technology permits, and let's have each voter name whomever he pleases for any office, without any prompting from parties. I won't dare promise that outcomes would differ, but at least we wouldn't see any more repeat performances of the sort of legal farce that renders our elections less democratic and less republican.

As it stands today, the Republicans and Democrats seem already to be well on their way toward eliminating the ballot as the primary mechanism for the installation of their apparatchiks. In the dystopian future all elections will be decided by the courts.