There would be no need for the Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition, composed of political "third parties" like the Libertarians and Greens, if the General Assembly respected the commonwealth's Constitution.
Article 1, Section 5, states clearly, emphatically -- and yet ironically -- that "Elections shall be free and equal; and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage."
The Constitution's framers would be appalled to see how the state's two-party monopoly, a duopoly of Republicans and Democrats, has rigged election laws to guarantee that no one can crash their party by being competitive.
Republican and Democrat statewide candidates typically can gain ballot access by collecting about 1,000 or 2,000 signatures on their petitions. But other parties and independent candidates need obscene multiples of those numbers.
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