Pennsylvania Representative Kerry Benninghoff’s bill to reform Pennsylvania ballot access is still not in print, but he has revealed some details of the bill. He would permit anyone to get on any ballot (primary or general) with a filing fee alternative to the existing petition requirement. He proposes that the fee would match the number of signatures, using the formula of one dollar equaling one petition signature. However, he would set a cap on the maximum fee. He has not decided on the amount of that cap, but it would probably range between $2,000 and $4,000. Of course, candidates who do not wish to pay that fee would still have the petition alternative.
All ballot access restrictions rest on the unproven and refutable proposition that space on the ballot is a scare resource that must be allocated by rationing space on the ballot.
In fact it is the demand for candidates, not the supply of space in the ballot that drives access to the ballot. The demand for candidates cannot be known by the suppliers of ballot space; demand must be revealed by candidates appearing to claim a finite, but ample, amount of space.
Recent California experience confirms the space on the ballot need never be rationed. Therefore, the object of limiting access is to monopolize the ballot to foster a cartel of candidates – limit voter choices by suppressing candidates claims to ballot space.
Upon the premise of a ballot cartel, the scheme of fees and taxes-in-kind (petitioning) is used to suppress competition without prohibition. Hence entrenchment of incompetence, corruption and limitless self-aggrandizement which subverts all pretense of ‘rule by the consent of the governed’…government without legitimacy and without the allegiance of the ruled – tyranny.
Ballot access restrictions as much as denial of the opportunity to vote at all means ‘elections’ are fundamentally fraudulent.
Happy bogus elections of 2008!