Why you should care
The Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition in seeking more choices for all of us on Election Day. Current Pennsylvania law makes it difficult for independent and minor party candidates to appear on the ballot — much more difficult than in most other states. The result is less political competition, less political dialog, and fewer choices to vote for in November. The current system is simply not fair and does a great disservice to the ideal of democracy and to the voters. What you can do about it.
The trainwreck of 2006
In 2006, independent and minor party candidates were required to collect over 67,000 valid signatures simply to get on the state-wide ballot in Pennsylvania on Election Day. Legally, Democratic and Republican candidates require no signatures to get on the state-wide ballot, and even the 2,000 signatures required for the Primary Day ballot are ridiculously smaller than the virtually impossible hurdle of 67,000.
The solution
Pennsylvania law needs to be changed by the State Legislature to lower the outrageous signature requirements. The Coalition has drafted a Voters' Choice Act and is seeking sponsorship of it in the General Assembly.
Ballots & access: Party crashers
Editorial, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Monday, October 31, 2005
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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Site last updated » March 4, 2008 «