Why Tea Party Activists Should Support Ballot Access Reform

Liberty Point, based in North Carolina, urges tea party activists to support ballot access reform, and makes quite a convincing case:

Most Tea Party participants believe they have the right to vote for anyone they choose in an election. Most also believe they have the right to run for office. Unfortunately, they are wrong. A state Superior Court judge said so in 2008 when the Libertarian and Green parties challenged the constitutionality of the state’s ballot access laws. The judge denied the claim saying, “there is no fundamental right for a voter to vote for the party of their choice.”

North Carolina has some of the most restrictive ballot access laws in the nation. It is actually less difficult to get on the ballot in Russia than it is in North Carolina. North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections is the only organization in North Carolina actively fighting to break down these restrictions . . .

North Carolina’s ballot access restrictions are designed to do one thing: perpetuate the stranglehold the Democratic-Republican duopoly has on power. Such severe limitations on the voter’s choice are not only unfair and unjust, they have no place in a republican form of government.

All the issues Tea Party participants are concerned about – from high taxes, massive government regulation on everyone and everything, the trampling of our inalienable rights, disregard for even basic civil liberties like freedom of speech, and the right of the people to assemble and to petition for redress of grievance – are all made possible because the Democratic and Republican parties have made it nearly impossible for anyone to dislodge them from office or wage a competitive campaign against them.

Without the right to vote for any candidate of your choice, you cannot protect your other rights. Without the right to vote for any candidate of your choice, elected officials have no reason to listen to you, or to answer your phone calls or e-mails. Without the right to vote for any candidate of your choice, not some party apparatchik approved by the State, your vote becomes nearly meaningless.

Without real competition, the two so-called major parties have no reason to pay attention to anyone who is not part of their system.

Read the whole thing.