1. South Carolina requires an independent candidate for U.S. House to submit exactly 10,000 valid signatures, and no one has ever done it.

   Does this mean that they cannot submit more than 10,000; that they have to submit exactly 10,000 and then have none of them invalidated?

2. Well, since the Republican Party is going to be a minor-sized party by 2012 (as I have been saying and writing for years now), the South Carolina GOP should take a step back and ponder about how such a law would make it more difficult for itself. There will probably be thousands of people who will choose to avoid the Republican Party primary elections in order to sign independent and/or other parties candidates, if such a law is passed. Furthermore, if the GOP loses ballot status in that state, it will be in the same boat as everyone else except for the Democratic Party.

3. Intend for somebody to be on a ballot BUT NOT vote for him/her ??? —- to have a few zillion names on the ballots for the entertainment of the voters (and ballot printers) ???

   Separate is still NOT equal — but apparently NOT detectable by the armies of MORON lawyers who keep screwing up ballot access cases.

   Brown v. Bd of Ed 1954

4. So you participate in a party primary, then walk across the street and sign an independent’s ballot access petition – and you do so only because you want to harm the chances for another opposition candidate. That’s why I support efforts like Dawson’s (and in Oregon), it keeps these strategic shenanigan’s in check. I’m all for voters having more choices but does that mean an individual can sign 10 petitions? Gets kind of messy!

5. krist Novoselic:

   So you want to protect the major party candidates from competition? If people like the “other opposition candidate,” why does it hurt for there to be another choice on the ballot?

   The reason for being able to vote in a primary and to sign a petition is so that you can hekp to make certain that there is a third party choice if your favored candidate does not get the nomination. Otherwise, voters who support candidates such as Ron Paul will have a much harder time voting for a third-party alternative when a jackass like McCain gets the nomination.

6. I’m all for more choices on the ballot – and, of course, reasonable ballot access and election rules that promote real choices instead of barriers meant to protect political insiders.

   If people like the “other opposition candidate” they need to get behind them. Party politics can be frustrating but one can always resign from the association if membership becomes burdensome. Participating in an organization’s nomination – and then signing an independent ballot access petition, can be disingenuous. It’s like the party raiding with a public primary ballot.

   This is why it hurts for there to be another choice on the ballot. Some petition signers seek to wreck the election for the opposition.

7. Glaivester,

   The state law requires at least 10,000 valid signatures, but even that is a bit misleading. The state’s laws establishes up a set of rules for evaluating the validity of petitions, and doesn’t require, and I believe doesn’t allow, each signature to be evaluated.

   While not an exact reading, the rules say something along the lines of “Check each of the first hundred signatures. Then check every tenth signature. Is the result, when calculated to cover the entire petition, more than required? If so, the petition is deemed sufficient. If the petition fails that evaluation each signature will be evaluated.”

   Since the state sells lists of registered voters…a state wide list is about $2000…the petitioner should be able to be assured of having gotten on the ballot before submitting it.

   Of course, no one should be required to seek a political party nomination if they want to run as an independent, but I do think it would be fair to point out that South Carolina has nine ballot qualified political parties. For many people who might want to follow an independent path it might make sense to look to one of the existing ballot qualified parties.

   To be honest, if Dawson and the Republicrats want to see this sort of thing happen, they should look seriously at changing the number of signatures required for an independent run. Since the number of signatures required is the same for a political party or a state wide candidate, any candidate who went through the effort of gathering those 10,000 signatures could simply submit them in the name of a party, and forever more have a slot on the ballot.

   Say something like “The Katon Dawson for South Carolina Party”.

   The point that should not be lost though is that the Republicrats want to stifle competition and limit options. The idea that a supporter of Fair Vote would support this anti-democratic move makes me wonder. Either he or I misunderstand what Fair Vote is all about.

8. Why would a district court decision from Michigan have precedence over a SCOTUS decision American Party of Texas v White which explicitly upheld a screenout?

   I suspect that there were other issues involved in Hall v Austin, such as Michigan had no means to run as an independent candidate. So at best the district court judges were giving their opinion on what signing an independent petition would mean if Michigan had independent petitions. Unless they were legislating from the bench, this is at best a personal opinion.

   There is a difference between requiring a candidate to form a political party in order to get on the ballot, and a voter voting in a party primary.

   In addition, the case involved a presidential election. In 1980, under the direction of the national Democratic Party, most Democrat candidates, including Jimmy Carter and Teddy Kennedy, boycotted the Michigan primary. There were under 40,000 votes cast in total for Ed Brown, Jr. and Lyndon Larouche, Jr.

   Voting in a political primary does not require one to support the nominees of the political party in the general election, and I doubt that any court would uphold such a requirement, even it were enforceable.

   I think you are splitting hairs when you say that a signer of an independent petition simply wants the name of the candidate to be place on the general election ballot, and the intent of a person voting in a primary election.

   Participation in a primary election is not a secret act.

9. “The point that should not be lost though is that the Republicrats want to stifle competition and limit options.” – This may very well be true. However, both of my comments focused on how this legislation could prevent spoiling an election with folks only signing a petition because of strategic intentions.

   I’m not aware that FairVote has a position on the SC legislation. To clear up any misunderstanding, I’ll say it again – I’m all for more choices on the ballot. In addition I’m all for political association.

   Let me tell you about my experience with independent signing petitions.

   In Washington state, I’ve seen a candidate lose a partisan primary because the people who signed an independent ballot access petition voted in a Democratic primary. The Republican ballot was unopposed. This independent was an incumbent running for a second term – originally elected as an independent.

   We had a system like Montana’s at the time – all a voter had to do was pick a major party ballot in the primary. The voters, who actually preferred the independent, voted for the Democratic candidate whom they perceived would be weaker in the general – and that candidate won the nomination. Therefore, the primary was raided. It was these voters who wanted to stifle competition and limit options!

   Is party raiding fair? Perhaps if the independent voters, as taxpayers, were looking for value with these publicly funded nominations. I think, especially with the explosive growth of association on the Internet, we need to move away from publicly funded and administered nominations.

   I also think we need to have election systems that foster association instead of stifling it.

10. 1. I may agree with the argument for such a law, if the petitioning rules for an Independent candidate were more on the lenient side.

    I am sorry, but 10,000 is way more then is rationally needed to avoid voter confusion. In Minnesota about 2,000 signatures will get an Ind or minor party candidate on the ballot. About 500 for State leg.

11. 2. Also, when you sign a petition you are really expressing a desire for greater voter choice. I have done some petitioning work for the U.S. House (MN 7th) Libertarian, even through I ended up voting for someone else.

    I also helped out a Green got onto the ballot, although in the end the drive failed because of a silly rule in the elections code.

12. All of these posts miss the point. Republicans and Democrats do not need nomination petition signatures. The signature requirement for party candidates is so low compared with their ability to get them that it only takes a short time for a party statewide candidate to get the signatures needed to get on the ballot. An independent candidate on the other hand, has a signature requirement in states with a large independent voter population that is impossible for an independent voter to obtain because an independent voter has no organized faction to obtain them.
    Political party politicians have written laws that only political party politicians can meet. For example, in Arizona, the state where I am registered as an independent candidate for governor, only two independent candidates have qualified to appear on the ballot. The first was Bill Schulz in 1986, who, as the Democratic frontrunner for his party’s nomination for governor, collected contributions and organized a following. After dropping out of the race for family reasons, Mr. Schulz re-entered it as an independent candidate and paid petition signature gatherers $6.50 per hour to get the necessary signatures with the campaign contributions he had previously collected as a Democratic candidate. The second was Dick Mahoney a former Secretary of State who ran in 2002 as an independent candidate. Mahoney organized a coalition of Democratic Party voters, mainly the ones who call themselves “rainbow” and succeeded in getting enough signatures to get on the ballot as an independent candidate.
    This all is to the disadvantage on independent voters seeking ballot access because federal courts point to candidacies like these in their decisions to uphold signature requirements like these:

    Independent voter 21,759
    Democratic 4,580
    Republican 5,184
    Libertarian 85

    which are the requirements I face in the 2008 election in Arizona.
    One interesting aspect of this is that while the independent voter requirement was 10,000 in 1986, the Democratic Party requirement was 3,000, and the Republican requirement was 3,600, meaning that since 1986, the independent requirement has more than doubled, while the major party requirements have increased by less than half, and minor party requirements have only increased by a few voters. These signature requirement laws should be contested on a mathematical basis, not by arguing about political philosophies. Party appointed federal judges are going to uphold party political philosophies, but they cannot argue against mathematics.
    It is more difficult for an independent candidate to collect signatures because it takes an organized faction to get them. This limits independent candidacy to the few independent voters wealthy enough to pay for people to support them or to party politicians who run as independent candidates. This amounts to taxation without representation for independent voters, since they cannot participate as candidates in elections. So we get to help pay for elections in which we cannot run for office and cannot vote as the parties move to exclude independents from voting in primary elections. In 1998 the voters passed an initiative for open primaries in Arizona. The parties immediately moved the Presidential Primary from September to February and obtained an opinion from Attorney General Janet Napolitano that since the Presidential Primary was not specifically mentioned in the open primary initiative, independent voters could not vote in the Presidential Primary, although they could still vote in the state primary.
    Political party politicians and political party appointed judges are not suddenly going to see the error of their ways and repent of the evil they have done. They are going to use every unfair advantage, every dishonest practice, every dollar they can steal from public revenues, and every falsehood they can think of to keep the election laws they now have.
    The way to defeat them is with the means they have provided, un-Constitutional election laws which do not meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Independent voters need to start running for office, especially state and local offices which have signature requirements
    that independent voters can by dilligent effort meet.
    An independent candidate does not need to be elected in order to improve the government. There are no independent candidates at the present time. Any independent candidate will improve the government because any independent candidate is a challenge to two-party corruption. Independent candidates do not need to organize faction, solicit contributions, make expenditures, be recognized by the news media, or any of the other things that party candidates do. All they need to do is get an unfair number of nomination petition signatures.
    Party politicians believe they have put independent candidacy out of reach for independent voters. Independent voters have one option. They have to qualify some candidates. That is the reality.
    So let us get to the heart of the matter. An independent voter is a United States citizen registered to vote. When the United States started, all voters were independent voters. Presidents George Washington and John Adams warned against the formation of political parties in American government, saying that parties were self created societies which seek artificial authority in government. In the election of 1800 a political party started by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison took over the government, and laws were passed at state level to give party politicians an advantage in elections.
    There has been no effective opposition to party control of government since that time. If there is ever to be opposition, it has to come through the electoral process. Party appointed judges are not going to help independent voters. Show me one court case where the rights of independent voters were upheld.
    Robert B. Winn

13. I helped pass Ranked Choice Voting (IRV) in Pierce County Washington. There, all candidates – even Major Party – need 100 or less (can’t exactly recall) signatures to get on the ballot.

    In Pierce, most RCV offices are partisan, therefore each private association has its own bylaws regarding nominations. The Republicans and Democrats, respectively, have their own rules that allow multiple nominations for the same race. And Democrats actually did nominate two candidates in some races. With the Republicans, an individual failed to get a nomination – by one vote! He then ran under the Executive Excellence Party – and got 12% of the first choices in the general election.

    I put a lot of effort in helping to create the situation above, and please take it as a representation of where I’m coming from: There should be uniform and reasonable signature requirements for ballot access regardless of what party, or not, a candidate is with. And of course – real choices on the ballot!

    10,000 signatures is outrageous and is without question a barrier to ballot access.

14. krist said:

    So you participate in a party primary, then walk across the street and sign an independent’s ballot access petition – and you do so only because you want to harm the chances for another opposition candidate.

    I said:

    So you want to protect the major party candidates from competition? If people like the “other opposition candidate,” why does it hurt for there to be another choice on the ballot?

    krist said:

    If people like the “other opposition candidate” they need to get behind them.

    What? What the heck are you talking about? I am not talking about the person who signs the petition “supporting another opposition candidate.” I am asking why, unless the “other opposition candidate” is scared that he is not popular enough to win, he should feel that it is unfairly damaging him to let someone else on the ballot?

    You seem to be suggesting that, e.g., for someone who voted in the GOP primary to sign a Nader petition is some sort of dirty trick. I’m saying that the only goal of trying to prevent that is to make it harder for Nader to get on the ballot, in order to force Nader voters to vote for the Democrat, which I think is a far dirtier trick.

    Party politics can be frustrating but one can always resign from the association if membership becomes burdensome. Participating in an organization’s nomination – and then signing an independent ballot access petition, can be disingenuous.

    No it isn’t. What if a person participated in the GOP primary, and worked very hard for Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, or someone else, and then was flabbergasted when the obnoxious McCain won? Neither McCain nor Obama is acceptable to them. So why cannot they work to get another candidate on the ballot so that they have an acceptable alternative? Why should participation in the GOP primary stick them with whomever the GOP winds up nominating?

15. Um, restrictive ballot access did not come with the rise of the anti-federalist party or the democratic republican parties. They came much later.

    If such laws are going to be changed then successful coalitions need to exist. Some people complaining on a message board or a periodic candidate, is probably not going to do it.

    We need a professional interest group that can win the support of voters — of many different and no party — and the type of people likely to hold office.

16. Restrictive ballot access was inevitable once political parties took over the government. Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren spent a great deal of time and effort convincing Americans that political parties were necessary. This set the stage for the Civil War, the ultimate partisan contest.
    The real restriction began as a means of stopping the populist movement within parties because the Republicans did not like populists, and the Democrats were tired of losing elections just because populist candidates were popular with Democratic voters. So the parties started party primary elections to re-establish party control over the nomination of party candidates.
    This is all irrelevant to independant voters of today. Each independent voter is still entitled to Constitutional rights that the parties say they have taken away, trial by jury, the right to vote, the right to run for office, the right to all other things guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Now both parties are becoming great champions of states rights, saying that a Federal law has no affect on state election laws with regard to independent voters. Independent voters need to regard party interpretation of election laws the same way they regard the Dred Scott decision, which happens to be the last Supreme Court decision in the United States regarding slavery. Corrupt courts make wrong decisions. The American people need to recognize their own rights regardless of what corrupt courts do.
    Robert B. Winn

17. Primary elections can along circa 1888-1890 due to the blatant party hacks controlling party hack conventions.

    NO secret ballots — vote the *correct* way or lose your job and/or get beat up (or even get killed).

    NO party hack primaries, caucuses and conventions are needed.

    Equal nominating petitions to directly get on general election ballots.
    P.R. legislative — A.V. executive/judicial

    All so very difficult for the EVIL party hacks.

18. #16: “… the parties started party primary elections to re-establish party control over the nomination of party candidates.”

    It’s much easier for party leaders to control such nominating processes as conventions and caucuses than direct primaries. When the state mandates open primaries, for example, each party is forced to let independents and members of opposing parties participate in its candidate-selection process.

    Party primaries had their beginnings with the Democrats of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, in 1842, and states began requiring parties to use primaries in the early 1900s.

    In Mississippi, a populist candidate for governor who had lost in the Democratic conventions of 1895 and 1899 won the first Democratic primary for governor in 1903.

19. I did not say no populist candidates were ever nominated after party primaries were started. I said that the populist movement was stopped by party primaries.
    Robert B. Winn

20. I wonder what’s ever happened to electoral freedom? What if a major party candidate loses in a primary and wants to run in the general election as an independent or third-party candidate? What if the taxpayers don’t want to give $3 to a fund for all parties, which includes parties they may not like? What if a voter signed a petition for one candidate during the primary but wanted to do the same for another candidate in the general election?

21. “Restrictive ballot access was inevitable once political parties took over the government.”

    False. If that were true, then why are restrictive ballot access laws not a problem in European countries, which have very strong party systems?

22. The Nazi Party had very restrictive laws. Jews could not run for public office. The Fascist Party had restrictive laws. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union only allowed Communist Party candidates on the ballot. European political parties are the parties that American political parties are copying when they come up with these restrictive laws. All political parties have the same purpose. They all exist to exclude people not in their party from participating in government.
    Robert B. Winn

23. #19: How did party primaries stop the populist movement?

    The Populist (or People’s) Party advocated the direct primary, since it is a more democratic method of nomination.

    #22: Since the Progressive Era of the early 1900s, most states have imposed tight regulations on how parties operate and manage their internal affairs. Professor Larry Sabato says these regulations give the U. S. “the dubious distinction of hosting the most governmentally fettered parties in the democratic world.”

    A citizen certainly has the right to be an independent, but a citizen does NOT have the right to force everyone else to be an independent.

    It’s strange that certain people who steadfastly refuse to join a party nevertheless expect to be able to participate in a party’s nominating process– even when that party does not invite them to do so.

24. You miss the point entirely. Independent voters are what remains of the American electoral system after it has been destroyed for two hundred years by self-created societies called political parties. All American voters are still independent voters whether they want to be or not because independent voters still exist in the United States after two hundred years of political party effort to eliminate them from the government. An independent voter is merely a United States citizen registered to vote. When the United States began, all voters were independent voters.
    An independent voter is guaranteed all of the individual rights afforded under the Constitution of the United States.
    A political party member is a United States voter who has voluntarily signed over individual rights to the control of a self-created society, which then permits the voter to exercise rights in a limited way according to the dictates of the party. In reality, the party member still has all of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, but cannot exercise them without incurring interference from the party. Having been successful in controlling their own members, the parties now seek control over all Americans, especially those registered independent. So whatever parties do to their own members is imposed on independent voters, only moreso. What needs to be noted is that the denial of rights does not remove those rights. For instance, Jews under control of the Nazi Party still had the right to live even though the Nazi Party was exterminating them with cyanide gas and disposing of the bodies in ovens. By the same token, independent voters in the United States today still have the right to participate in elections, a right guaranteed by the Constitution, even though they are prevented in many states from registering to vote, from becoming candidates for office, and from voting in elections because political parties want to deny them those rights. As far as being invited to join a party’s nomination process, when a political party pays for its own nomination process, it has every right to exclude non-members from voting. When it uses public revenues taken from taxes paid by independent voters to pay for its nomination process, independent voters have a right to vote in their party primary. Otherwise, independent voters are being subjected to taxation without representation. The use of public revenues to pay for party primaries is enough invitation for me as an independent voter. I want to vote in any election I have to pay for, even if all of the candidates are corrupt party politicians. So if you want to cancel the invitation, just pay for your own primary elections. That would certainly be the best way to exclude independent voters from your primary elections in a way that would be agreeable to everyone.
    With regard to the Populist movement, it was a movement within political parties which began with an idea among individual voters that they could have a voice in government by selecting and backing candidates from among themselves instead of backing candidates selected by party leaders. It started and had its greatest strength within the Democratic Party. The Populist Party was not started until the Democratic Party began to purge populism because of its failure to elect a Democratic Presidential candidate. The Populist Party may have supported primary elections, but it did not come up with the idea, and in case you did not notice, there is no Populist Party today. The two major parties invented primary elections as a means of insuring that there would not be any more populist movements.
    Robert B. Winn

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