On April 19, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published the first of a two-part series about Pennsylvania’s unique policy of charging large amounts of money to candidates who file petitions to get on the ballot, and whose petitions are invalidated. Here is the first installment.
The filing fees should simply be based on helping to cover the production costs of the official state ballot and should be excluded for the poor or for people who submit a petition.
Likewise the petitioning requirements should only serve to ensure that citizens — irrespective of their political affiliations — who seek public office have given it a bit of thought and have a minimum level of support.
Letting citizens challenge a petition has lots of red flags. What if a Republican challenges a Democrat or vice vera simply to find some small clerical error and keep the candidate off the ballot? What if the Libertarians challenged the Socialists or vica vera for similar reasons?
Both fee and petitioning conditions can be met by pretty liberal and equitable petitioning and fee requirements.