On July 17, Pennsylvania State Senator Mike Folmer (R-Lancaster and Lebanon Counties) contacted the Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition, and requested a copy of the Coalition’s original 2007 ballot access proposal. The Senator said he is not interested in Representative Kerry Benninghoff’s idea for replacing mandatory petitions with filing fees. Senator Folmer wants ideas for a bill specifically to help minor parties. The Coalition’s original proposal, submitted to all legislators last year, was a ballot access system similar to Delaware’s system. In Delaware, minor parties that attain a certain number of registered voters are considered qualified parties, and nominate by convention, and are automatically on the November ballot.
It sounds like the Folmer bill would help minor third parties like ourselves, but would leave out independent candidates.
Rep. Benninghoff’s plan would create a blanket fee for all candidates, including independents.
Is this correct in regards to independents?
I would take either one. However, I would tend to support the Benninghoff bill more because it would help independent candidates as well as ALL third parties more easily gain ballot access, providing they can pay the fee.
We don’t know for sure what Folmer wants to do for independent candidates. But the Benninghoff bill, although well-meaning, sets much bigger filing fees for indps and minor parties, than for Dems & Reps.
I think any ballot access reform in Pennsylvania should eliminate the mandate to use the primary election process for candidate nomination once a political party has 15% of the registered voters. It could remain optional, perhaps even requiring signatures of registered party members to appear on that ballot.
The Benninghoff Bill provides an alternative to the signature gathering. The declaration fees would be a new option. If you have a few candidates running and some cash and few volunters, then the declaration fees may be your better option. If you are running a slate of candidates then signature gathering would remain your better option since you can stack candidates on a petition as long as the signers can vote for all candidates listed, i.e. overlapping Legislative, State Senate, Congressional and Statewide districts. This gives synergy of effort when you have a significant number of candidates and volunteers. All statewide candidates could go on one petition. In some years that would be US Senate, Attorney General, State Treasurer, Auditor General as statewides — 30,000 signatures on a petition or $100,000 in declaration fees. Having more options is a good thing, even if they are not great options.
Of course Folmer’s bill would be significantly better.
Richard: In June (Friday the 13th) I moved to Lebanon PA into Folmer’s District. Maybe Friday the 13th isn’t unlucky after all.