Free and Fair Elections Are Impossible with an Unfree and Unfair Ballot Access Regime

As you may have heard, only two candidates for the Republican presidential election have qualified to appear on Virginia's primary ballot: Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.  Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman did not even attempt to gather the over 10,000 valid signatures that would have assured their place on the ballot.  Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich did, but failed to obtain enough valid signatures before the petition deadline.  Needless to say, this is not sitting well with the Gingrich and Perry campaigns and, predictably, they have now become supporters of choice and competition.  From Angel Clark at the Examiner:

I doubt Newt Gingrich even realizes what he said here! He's upset as he is not going to be on the primary ballot in Virginia.

We're getting an amazing number of people who … believe Virginians ought to have the right to choose and shouldn't be restricted to two people."

Oh, of course! He wants people to vote for him, to choose him as one of the only two people they are supposed to get to choose from for President of the United States of America (using his two-party system), but when he is not one of the two people, it's not fair. The system has failed.

 "Voters deserve the right to vote for any top contender, especially leading candidates."

I doubt Newt Gingrich even realizes what he said here! He's upset as he is not going to be on the primary ballot in Virginia.

 We're getting an amazing number of people who … believe Virginians ought to have the right to choose and shouldn't be restricted to two people."

Oh, of course! He wants people to vote for him, to choose him as one of the only two people they are supposed to get to choose from for President of the United States of America (using his two-party system), but when he is not one of the two people, it's not fair. The system has failed.

 "Voters deserve the right to vote for any top contender, especially leading candidates,"

Interesting... I guess what he should be saying is any top contender who plays by the rules of the Republicans vs. Democrats...

Gingrich and Perry's failure to achieve ballot access has brought renewed attention to the biased and discriminatory ballot access regime that has been instituted by the dictatorship of the Republican and Democratic parties over the last century.  Indiana's News Sentinel takes the opportunity to call for ballot access reform.  Excerpt:

Virginia voters will not have the seven candidatures now running but only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul to choose from.  And Virginia isn't even listed among the five worst states for access. But Indiana is, along with Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina. The troubles of Perry and Gingrich in Virginia should be a strong incentive for the Hoosier political establishment to start making access a little easier here. They won't, sadly, but they should be.

The candidates have a point when they complain about Virginia's rules (and Perry is also suing). Like the rules in most states, Virginia's requirements may make it tough on Republicans and Democrats, but their main purpose is to keep the third-party and independent riffraff away. The state requires that people carrying petitions for the candidates must be registered Virginia voters or those eligible (by residence and age) to be registered Virginia voters. That means Perry, for example, had to recruit local talent instead of bringing his Texas team in. It's little wonder that only 6,000 of the 11,900 petition signatures he submitted were ruled valid.

Perry claims in his suit that the requirement violates his First Amendment rights because it puts a too-heavy burden on his ability to engage in political speech. That's a valid constitutional issue, and past decisions by the Supreme Court and other courts indicate that a ruling on the point could go either way. Perry certainly has the moral high ground. States should encourage participation in the political process, not make it more difficult and expensive.

Indiana's requirements are so tough for independent and third-party candidates that Libertarians are usually the only ones able to collect enough signatures. Even Ralph Nader didn't get on our ballot in 2008. To make it, a candidate must collect signatures from 2 percent of the total votes cast in the most recent secretary of state election. Considering recent voting numbers, that means getting about 34,000 signatures, compared with the mere 4,500 required for Democrats and Republicans.

Indiana's primary is so late in the election year that voters usually have little reason to participate; the presidential candidate has already been chosen before our May date. Keeping our ballot-access requirements so high further dampens voter enthusiasm, and that's not good for the process or the electorate. 

As the News Sentinel points out, these draconian ballot access restrictions were primarily instituted to prevent third party and independent from competing on a level playing field with the ruling parties.  At Free Virginia, Marc Montoni, the Secretary of the Libertarian Party of Virgina, argues that this is a teachable moment for Republicans:

Last Friday afternoon, December 23, 2011, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry were notified that they had not turned in enough valid signatures to qualify their names for Virginia's Republican primary ballot . . .  Gentlemen, welcome to the world where adherents of the Libertarian Party, the Greens, or the Constitution Party live: where their exhausting effort and huge expense meets bureaucracy, unending paperwork and needless legal hurdles -- before we are even allowed our place at the starting line.

Virginia’s primary petition requirements were copied from the laws originally written to keep independents and third parties off the ballot. For a century, Democrats and Republicans colluded to establish and tighten ballot-access standards so much that voter choice has become practically nonexistent. This makes it difficult for us in the alternative & independent candidate sector to feel much sympathy for the ‘major’ candidates when their own laws snare them. One would hope that the Republicans would take this as an educational opportunity . . . 

Petitioning laws were originally built -- the strictest of them by majority-Democratic legislatures between 1910 and 1970 -- to shut out third parties like the Libertarian Party. The laws did the job, too -- in some states, third parties have not been allowed on the ballot for over half a century, and counting.

Petitioning requirements force new, upstart third parties to exhaust themselves asking several hundred thousand voters to help them qualify for the ballot. Unless those new parties have the money and activist backing of the wealthy and political elite already, just getting on the ballot so they can then present their ideas to voters is an expensive, time-consuming task.

Republicans should be wary of restrictive ballot access . . . Nor should the Democrats, in their glee about the Republicans' difficulties, forget how restrictive ballot laws sometimes snare them as well . . .

Democrats and Republicans alike have forgotten that elections are for voters. When voters can't vote for the candidate they wish to vote for, they are being hurt and our political discussion is being disrupted.

Perhaps the Republicans who now control the state legislature should take this as a message that Virginia's restrictive ballot-access laws are overdue for some overhaul.

The Libertarian Party’s position is that primaries are essentially state subsidies for political parties. Therefore, the only real reform needed to the “primary process” is to eliminate government-run primaries altogether, and allow political party members to determine who they wish to represent them during the general election – at their own expense.

Failing that, then reform can be easily accomplished by simply reducing the petition requirement . . . I have personally collected thousands of petition signatures for dozens of candidates at different levels. Anyone who thinks requiring thousands of signatures to get on the ballot is compatible with a free society needs to research the history and justifications for these oppressive laws a bit more.

Forcing alternative candidates -- who haven't been given the chance to appear in the modern "public square" that is the media -- to utterly exhaust themselves collecting signatures is a reprehensible practice in a “free” society.

Governments should not have any ability to control ballots at all. Open ballots not printed or controlled by government gave us men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Compare them -- even with all of their faults -- to the modern crop of corruptocrats. 

Montoni closes with a plan to reform ballot access law in Virginia:

Making Virginia’s Ballot Laws Better

Reform of Virginia’s ballot access laws should begin with the following:

1. Reduce signature requirements for all offices and all candidates -- Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, or independent -- by 90 % (rounding to next 10). A statewide candidate petition (Governor, president, etc) would then require 1,000 signatures; a candidate for congress would need to collect 150, a state delegate candidate, 20.
2. Introduce a full-party access petition, 10,000 signatures to place a new party on the general election ballot for two statewide cycles.
3. Eliminate the witnessing requirement for petition signatures.
4. Eliminate the residency requirement for petitioners.
5. Eliminate petition sheets, and move to a postcard petition -- where individual voters would fill out a post card stating they wish a candidate (or party) to be placed on the ballot.
6. Get with the last decade and allow petitions to be ‘signed’ by voters online.