Former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley is being interviewed on various media outlets about his new book, “We Can All Do Better.” On KCBS radio in San Francisco on the morning of May 20, he said that he wishes there were a new political party that would focus on Congressional elections. He said even if that new party won twenty seats in Congress, it could change national economic policy.

Ironically, the worst ballot access laws in the nation are those for independent candidates for U.S. House. There is no state that has a truly impossible ballot access law for minor party and independent candidates for President, although Oklahoma comes close for that office. But for U.S. House, the laws are far more repressive. No independent candidate for U.S. House has ever appeared on a government-printed ballot in either North Carolina or South Carolina. And no minor party or independent candidate for U.S. House has been able to comply with Georgia’s existing law since it was toughened in 1964. Yet the lower courts have repeatedly upheld these laws, even though in both 1974 and 1977 the U.S. Supreme Court said that ballot access laws that are so tough they are seldom used, are probably unconstitutionally difficult. And when these cases from Georgia and North Carolina are appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear them.