<blockquote>Drawn into a Missouri debate over same-sex marriage, Sen. John F. Kerry said in an interview published Friday that he would've voted for the gay marriage ban passed overwhelmingly this week by state voters.
The Democratic presidential nominee, who spent parts of two days campaigning across Missouri, told the Kansas City Star that the ballot measure was the same as one his home state of Massachusetts passed a few years ago. Kerry supported that measure. . . . (Mark Z. Barabak, "Kerry Backs Missouri Ban on Gay Marriage," <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-gay7aug07,1,5074252.story?coll=la-news-politics-national">August 7, 2004)</blockquote>
>[lbo-talk] The Importance of Disenfranchising Nader/Camejo Voters
>Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org, Tue Aug 10 14:56:46 PDT 2004
<snip>
>Folks complain about ballot access rules and the two-party monopoly
>as what keeps third parties out, yet they blithely ignore Louisiana.
>There are NO PARTISAN PRIMARIES, yet third parties have not made
>inroads there.
The working class won voting rights. That poorer voters are less likely to exercise them than richer ones doesn't mean that we should tolerate laws and regulations that disenfranchise working-class voters disproportionately by saying, "Hey, they haven't made much use of voting rights anyhow."
>[lbo-talk] The Importance of Disenfranchising Nader/Camejo Voters
>Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org, Tue Aug 10 14:56:46 PDT 2004
<snip>
>But if any party can't make the pretty basic threshholds required
>under most state laws, they don't have any chance of victory, so
>they are just playing to be spoilers by definition.
<blockquote>Ballot Rules Add to Spiraling Campaign Costs
Even when a candidate or a party clears the hurdles to the ballot, burdensome ballot rules exact a dear price. Ballot rules siphon mounds of money out of campaign coffers. Then, in many states, candidates spend another bundle defending the petitions against legal challenges -- sometimes litigating minutiae as trivial as the ink color or the validity of a signature that substitutes "Wm." for "William" or "Jim" for "James". Thus, candidates spend precious campaign resources simply getting into the race rather than reserving resources to spread their message. . . .
The added cost is particularly troubling to those who bemoan the so-called "wealth primary" -- the inequity of a system in which money controls who can run for political office. After all, preclusive ballot rules do not exclude all contenders. Candidates with fortunes to dump on armies of canvassers can overcome ballot hurdles. . . . It is no surprise that only a party backed by a billionaire could even aspire to burst on the scene and secure a ballot listing in almost every state within a year. Magnates sticking their feet in the door of electoral politics is hardly a portrait of an ideal democracy in action.
A Brief History of Ballot Access Rules
Emergence of the "Australian Ballot"
It was not always so. Until 1888, there were no ballot access laws, because the government did not print ballots. Instead, voters would write their own ballots. Or they would use ballots printed and distributed by the parties, each listing only the candidates of the party. Voters could simply stuff the party's ballot in the box, or tailor it with their own handwritten amendments.
The system, while affording each voter virtually unlimited choice, was plagued with confusion and inefficiency. Inevitably, voters were imprecise about the identities of their preferred candidates, or about the offices for which they were voting. In response, the government began to print ballots listing all candidates running for each office. The so-called "Australian ballot" caught like wildfire, and has remained with us, with little modification, for the past century.
Initially, the Australian ballot supplemented homemade ballots, but eventually it supplanted them. The moment the government monopolized the printing of ballots, ballot access rules became crucially important to candidates and voters. Ballot access rules served several legitimate purposes. No one seriously disputes that ballot access rules of some sort are necessary:
* to prevent ballot overcrowding * to safeguard against voter confusion * to deter frivolous candidacies * to ensure against fraud
To achieve these ends ballot access rules did not have to be particularly onerous. The early rules simply ensured that a candidate had a modicum of support among the electorate. Ballot access expert Richard Winger observes that from 1892 to 1916, there was at least one third party on the ballot of every single state in almost every presidential election. In 1924, the new Progressive Party had to gather a mere 50,000 signatures to get its nominee, U.S. Senator Robert LaFollette, Sr., on the ballot in each of the 48 states. That was 1/6 of 1% of the total vote cast for president that year. LaFollette secured a ballot position in every state but one.
Partially as a result of these lenient ballot rules, third parties thrived in the first quarter of the century. Winger makes the following telling observations:
From 1904 to 1920, the Socialist Party had candidates for the House on the ballot in over half the districts nationally. Wisconsin elected a Socialist congressman in each of 5 elections, and New York elected one in each of 4 years. The party elected 20 state legislators in 1910 and 31 in 1912.
During the same period, Californians elected a Prohibition Party congressman 3 times and Pennsylvania once. In 1914, the party secured state legislature seats in 6 states, including 7 in Minnesota, and its candidate won the gubernatorial election in Florida.
The Progressive Party elected 17 candidates to the House in 1912 and a governor of California in 1914.
Back then, ballot access was also not much of an issue for candidates seeking a major party nomination. After all, it was not until the latter half of the century that primaries became the principal route to the nomination. Theodore Roosevelt, who won 9 of the 13 Republican primaries in 1912, was not even considered for the nomination at the national convention; the nomination went to William Howard Taft, who had won only one primary. Likewise, Estes Kefauver won 12 out of the 15 Democratic primaries in 1952, but lost the party's nomination to Adlai Stevenson who had not run in a single primary.
Ballot Rules Tighten
As time went on, party bosses seized upon ballot access laws as a way to restrict competition, both from third parties and, as primaries became more popular, from insurgents within the party. Ballot access laws started stiffening after the first quarter of the 20th century, with particularly marked increases in ballot hurdles in the 1960s and 1970s.
Today, a third party would have to gather 1,600,000 signatures nationwide to petition its way onto the presidential ballot in every state. To run a slate of candidates in every federal and statewide election, the party would have to gather over 3,500,000 signatures, reports Ballot Access News (Feb. 8, 1994). An independent candidate would have to gather over 750,000 signatures. And, now that 43 states run primaries for at least one party, a major party candidate seeking to petition his way onto the primary ballot in every state would have to gather over 186,000 signatures (though, as we shall see, the more prominent candidates need not gather as many signatures).
Winger describes a typical example of how emerging barriers worked to the disadvantage of outsiders in 1913. Fears of the Communist Party's popularity in Chicago in 1913 evidently prompted the state legislature to amend its ballot laws. The petition requirement for a third party skyrocketed from 1,000 signatures to 25,000. A geographic distribution requirement-200 signatures from each of 50 counties-further hobbled the party, which had a concentrated base of support. The Communist Party failed to secure a ballot position for any of the next five statewide elections. Another provision raised barriers for local offices as well, so that a party wishing to nominate a mayoral candidate in Chicago had to gather 50,000 signatures. As long as the law was in effect, no third party ever made it onto the ballot for the Chicago mayoral election.
The tightening of ballot rules often yielded unintended, even embarrassing, consequences. Florida amended its election statute in 1931 to repeal all procedures by which a third party or an independent candidate could get on the ballot. Only a party that had polled 30% of the vote in a previous election could have a slot on the ballot. But then in 1932 and 1936 the Republican Party failed to meet the new threshold for any statewide election, and it was knocked off the ballot without any prospect for getting back on, until the state added a registration threshold as an alternate route to the ballot. . . .
These restrictions, and many others, could not be defended on the grounds that originally justified ballot rules. The states that passed the more restrictive laws were not reacting to overcrowded ballots or confused voters. And the new laws were deterring more than frivolous candidacies. New rationales -- some unapologetically hostile to third parties and other upstarts -- cropped up to justify ballot access restrictions. Among them were a newfound interest in
* protecting the integrity of the two-party system * preventing factioning and splintering of the major parties * fostering responsible voting
These newfangled justifications for ballot access rules, all judicially sanctioned, are hardly uncontroversial. Many believe that our political system was invigorated, not destabilized, in the first quarter of the century when at least 3 third parties -- the Socialists, the Prohibition Party, and the Progressives -- erupted on the national scene. And the suggestion that limiting voter choice is necessary to foster responsible voting comes uncomfortably close to a pronouncement that voters cannot be trusted to vote responsibly without some filtering by government authorities. ("Chapter One: The Myth of Voter Choice," <a href="http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/programs_vc_ch1.html"></a>)</blockquote> -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>