David Orr has this letter to the editor in the May 5 Chicago Tribune. Orr is the County Clerk of Cook County, Illinois. He says ballot access should be eased. Orr was elected on the Democratic ticket in 1990, and he has been re-elected every four years, ever since.
I have been paying attention to publicity about ballot access for many decades, and I have never before seen so much attention paid to restrictive ballot access laws during a mid-term year. Presidential election years sometimes also provide much publicity about ballot access laws, especially in 1980, 1992, and 2000. But probably there has never been a mid-term election year in the United States in which so much attention was paid to the ballot access issue. This year, major newspapers in Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania, have publicized the issue in a supportive way.
The press in Massachusetts and New Hampshire ought to be paying attention, but newspapers in those two states seem to have a blind spot. Massachusetts ballot access to primary ballots is so bad, Massachusetts is the only non-southern state in which most legislative races usually have only one candidate on the November ballot. But no Massachusetts newspaper ever talks about this.
Thanks to Jeff Trigg for the link.
The major newspapers in California have generally been supportive of Proposition 14, that would dramatically reduce the signature requirements for independent candidates, and from non-qualified parties.
So far, every California newspaper that has taken a position on Prop. 14 has simply repeated its position from Prop. 62 from 2004.
Separate is still NOT equal.
Brown v. Bd of Ed 1954 —
regardless of armies of MORON ballot access lawyers since 1968.
Each election is NEW and has ZERO to do with any prior election.
Obvious remedy – EQUAL ballot access petitions for ALL candidates in the same area for the same office.
Way too difficult for the party hack Supremes to understand.