On June 4, a South Carolina conference committee passed SB 2, the “Equal Access to Ballot Act.” The bill is helpful, although one could argue that its title exaggerates what it actually does. It provides that all candidates, incumbents and challengers alike, are treated the same relative to filing campaign finance documents. Under current law, incumbents didn’t have the same requirements to file certain campaign finance documents that challengers did.

More important, the bill provides that when a legally required campaign finance document is not filed in a timely way, the candidate is fined, but still appears on the primary ballot. Assuming this bill now passes both Houses and is signed into law, it would prevent a recurrence of what happened in 2012, when over 200 candidates for state and local office were kept off primary ballots because they had not filed certain campaign finance documents both in paper and electronically. See this story. The conference committee had been appointed May 2, and it took over a month before it finalized the bill language.

If South Carolina truly had an “equal access to ballot” law, it would let independent candidates get on the general election ballot without a petition, if they paid the same filing fee that primary candidates must file. That idea was not discussed and has nothing to do with the contents of the actual bill. South Carolina petitions for independent candidates for the legislature are tied with Georgia and North Carolina for being the most restrictive in the nation. They require 5% of the number of registered voters to sign the petition for legislative independent candidates.