Remarks of Jim Clymer, national chairman of the Constitution Party, at the kickoff rally for the Voter’s Choice Act

Harrisburg State Capitol
September 24, 2005

I join you today in support of the Voter’s Choice Act. It is long past due.

The major parties have conspired to make Pennsylvania one of the most difficult states in the nation to acquire permanent ballot access so they can maintain a monopoly stranglehold on the electoral process. The current requirement for a party to participate in the primary nominating process is having a minimum of 15% of all registered voters in the state being registered in your party. That is an almost impossible threshold and simple math shows that it would likely be impossible for any party to achieve that if there were very many parties given that nearly a third of the people register for something other than the two major parties. By that standard, the Republican Party in Massachusetts would be a minority party and could not nominate its candidates by primary elections. In Utah, the Democrat Party would be a minority party by Pennsylvania standards and denied access to primary elections.

The Pennsylvania Constitution asserts that "Elections shall be free and equal" in it Declaration of Rights. It has always been a bedrock principle of freedom loving people that there ought to be a fundamental fairness in the electoral process, that there should be equality among the citizens in their being able to participate in how the leaders of a free society are chosen.

Our Founding Fathers clearly understood how important that is. Thomas Paine, best known for his Revolutionary War era Common Sense, stated that "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another."

When we are denied equal access to the ballot box as our current election code prescribes, we are reduced to slavery because we have no real means of effecting the election of those who rule over us. We are forced to accept the two names put forth by the major party structure and there is no debate on issues they choose not to address.

An often overlooked anomaly of the election code is that it has no logical basis for whatever state interests it was designed to protect. For the year 2006 in a statewide race, it will require in excess of 67,000 good signatures on a Nomination Paper to get a minor or independent candidate on the ballot (compared with only 2000 for a major party candidate to get on the primary ballot) while in 2004 it required less than 25,000. The law as written usually requires more for a judicial race than for a presidential race. For state representative candidacies, using the same formula mandated by the election code, in many cases the requirement is not any higher than that required by the major party candidates. If third party candidates for the state Assembly can qualify for ballot access with the same number as that required for a major party candidate, why not for a statewide race.

It’s time we held our legislative representative’s feet to the fire, insisting that they amend the election code to conform to the Constitutional mandate of free and equal elections.