On April 21, the Pennsylvania Governor’s Task Force on Election Reform formally voted to include this recommendation: “That the Election code be amended to provide greater access to the ballot for minor political parties and political bodies.” The vote was 12 to 0, with one abstention.
I received this in an e-mail today:
BALLOT ACCESS: A VICTORY FOR PENNSYLVANIANS
Hi Everyone,
On Thursday, April 14th my colleagues and I in the Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition (PBAC) made our presentation to Governor Rendell’s Task Force on Election Reform. To our delight the task force immediately voted to recommend to the governor that ballot access laws in Pennsylvania be amended in such a way that they are more equitable to independent candidates and the candidates from minor parties. It now remains our task in the PBAC to convince the Pennsylvania legislature to adopt our language.
My colleagues and I from the Libertarian, Constitution and Green parties have been working diligently for the last five months to draft legislation that would give more choices to the voters of Pennsylvania. We identified the following areas as detrimental to minor parties and independent candidates in seeking ballot access:
1). The oppressive signature requirements. The current law requires statewide candidates to obtain signatures in order to be on the ballot in Pennsylvania. The number of signatures is determined to be 2% of the votes gained by the highest vote-getter in a previous election. In the 2004 presidential election Ralph Nader was required to get approximately 26,000 signatures while the old parties where only required to get 2,000 signatures — that requirement was for their primary elections. No signatures were required for the old parties in the general election.
While 26,000 signatures is a great deal of signatures, a disaster is waiting to happen. In 2006 statewide candidates will be required to get approximately 67,000 signatures! It will be impossible for any independent to get that number and most likely impossible for any of the minor parties with the exception of the Libertarian Party to obtain that number. In order to get 67,000 valid signatures, it is necessary to collect approximately 100,000 signatures! Even when the Libertarians gain those signatures, their resources will be exhausted and they will be seriously hampered in getting their message to the voters of Pennsylvania.
2). Maintaining minor party status.
Currently Pennsylvania law requires that minor parties in order to maintain their status must receive a certain percentage of votes in the previous year’s election. Since some parties do not wish to run candidates in every election, they are forced to go through the petitioning process every time they wish to run a candidate.
3). Restrictive requirements for write-in candidates.
Current law requires that when voting for a write-in candidate, voters must not only write in the name of the presidential and vice presidential candidate but all 21 electors in an area about 1 inch square!
4). Residency requirement for signature collectors
Independent candidates have no organization in place as do established parties. It becomes virtually impossible to gather enough volunteers in the short period of time permitted for signature gathering to get the job done by using only residents of the state of Pennsylvania.
5). Existing election laws do not reflect recent court decisions.
Over the years, court rulings have effected substantial changes to the ballot access laws but few of them are reflected in the Pennsylvania statutes. For example, the petitioning deadline of August 1 is not found in law but rather in a court case.
Along with these five we found many other areas which should be revised however, realizing the existing workload on the state legislature, it was decided to focus on two areas which would be of greatest benefit to minor parties and independent candidates. Moreover these two areas would also have the effect of reducing the impact of several less critical areas.
THE PENNSYLVANIA BALLOT ACCESS COALITION PROPOSALS
We in The Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition decided to make proposals that would reduce the number of signatures required for minor parties and independent candidates to gain ballot access and change the law requiring minor parties to maintain their minor party status based on number the of people registered in that party as opposed to a percentage of the previous year’s election. We specifically used the “Delaware Model” for our proposal.
If adopted this would mean that candidates for statewide office would only need 0.05% of the signatures of the highest vote-getter in the previous election. For example, in 2004 instead of getting 26,000 votes, Mr. Nader would have only had only needed 4,000 votes. Similarly basing minor party status on having 0.05% of the total number of people registered to vote would eliminate the necessity of having minor parties re-qualify every couple of years.
In our written report presented to the Governor’s task force we gave the historical arguments as to why changing the restrictive ballot access in Pennsylvania would lead to greater voter turnout. We spelled out at great length how the existing Pennsylvania laws were used by the Democratic Party to destroy the candidacy of Ralph Nader. Our entire written report to the Governor’s task force can be found on our web site at: http://www.paballotaccess.org/Presentation_Final.pdf).
I applaud anyone that can get the tyranny of Pennsylvania to ease their restrictive ballot access laws. I think a fee should be charged to get on the ballot and forget any petitions.