On January 19, the Kansas Secretary of State announced that four candidates had filed for the Republican presidential primary, and also four had filed for the Democratic presidential primary. Candidates needed a $10,000 filing fee to get on the ballot.
Republicans are Ryan Binkley, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Donald Trump.
Democrats are Joe Biden, Jason Palmer, Dean Phillips, and Marianne Williamson.
The primary is March 19.
Parties should have similar options everywhere.
ANY CASE AGAINST THE FILING FEE. ???
SEE 1970S SCOTUS CASE
It would be more honest than the current method of pretending that paying petitioners to find people who aren’t opposed to whoever being on the ballot and spending a few seconds to sign is tantamount to finding actual supporters. It’s actually effectively really a filing fee which does nothing else except waste money, time, paper, etc.
Our petitions also double as toilet paper before we turn them in.
@Realist
If the rules say that you can only sign one candidate’s petition (per race), would that change your opinion? What other way could we measure actual support? Or, should we even bother?
No, it wouldn’t. Unless the signature requirements are made so insanely high that literally no candidate is ever likely to qualify, most voters won’t encounter any of the petitioners for any of the candidates, much less for all of the candidates petitioning. The chance that they are passing up signing for the candidate they actually support by signing for someone else is low.
Traditionally, the way to measure actual support has been called an election.
Secret ballots are the actual problem here. If who voters support in the actual election becomes a matter of public record, who they sign for to qualify could become enforceable, with long prison sentences and public corporal punishment for anyone who signs and votes for different candidates.