ballot access

[cellio]

Tonight outside the grocery store a man holding a clipboard approached me.

Him: Are you registered to vote?
Me: Yes.
Him: Would you be willing to sign a petition to get a third-party candidate onto the ballot?
Me: Quite likely -- which party?
Him: Libertarian.
Me: Oh good; I've been hoping a petition for Gary Johnson would cross my path. Gimme that.
Him: Sounds like you're politically active.
Me: If I were active I'd have my own petition.
Him: Sounds like you're politically informed.
Me: Yeah, that's closer.

Ballot access is rigged by the two major parties to, as much as possible, keep everybody else out. Other parties need to gather a disproportionate number of signatures, for each race, to get a candidate onto the ballot. And it's pretty much a given that the major parties will challenge the petitions for other candidates, so in practice you need to collect three or four times as many signatures as you officially "need", just to be safe. This is why I was very likely to sign the petition even before knowing who it was for (though if it had been someone repugnant I'd've said no).

Smaller parties are better served trying to gain local and state offices; the White House and probably Congress are out of reach. But there's more publicity to be had for national races, and this year especially I think it's worth giving serious consideration to alternatives. Gary Johnson is a pragmatist, not a hard-line idealist, and he has experience with the realities of the political world (he was governor of New Mexico). I hope we get more of a chance to passively hear what he has to say.

Comments

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

If third parties are ever to actually elect candidates (as opposed to shooting down the mainstream candidate who most closely resembles them), it'll require a more sophisticated voting system, starting with a ranked ballot that allows voters to express which candidate they like the most, which they like the least, and everything in between. (How you count the ballots is a separate question: instant runoff, Condorcet, and Borda are three different methods, of which instant runoff is probably the worst, but any of them would be an improvement.)

The question, then, is how to get from here to there. How do you get officials who were elected under a one-vote-for-your-favorite system to move in the direction of more voter expressiveness? What would be the 'baby steps'?

This year's Republican primaries might provide an argument: the one-vote-for-your-favorite system favors the candidate with the most passionate supporters, regardless of how many and how passionate his/her detractors are; it measures positives, not negatives, as long as there are more than two candidates. So we whittled away a bunch of candidates who didn't have strong positives or negatives until we were down to two with vocal supporters and strong negatives, and then picked one of those. Thing is, Candidate X's strong supporters are mostly within the party, while X's negatives will only grow during the general election, so this system is a good way to pick nominees who lose general elections.

[cellio]

We need some form of preference ballot, yes, and since that's against the interests of those in power, it's not likely to happen. This is why other parties need to concentrate on smaller elections -- in a local election I think it's easier to campaign (a) at all and (b) on the merits of the individual candidate -- it's not just a party vote, but your neighbor Bob. (No, I don't have data; it seems reasonable but I could of course be wrong.)

The value of participating in larger elections isn't to get elected; that won't happen. The value is to be (potentially) able to influence the discourse. Isn't that why Sanders stayed in way past the point where he had to know that Clinton would be the nominee? He cares about getting certain issues front and center and used the primary to do that. If a candidate from another party can actually get into the debates (requires 15% in certain opinion polls; spread the word), can get some media attention, or can get people talking some other way, that helps even though he's not going to win. Most such candidates don't have, and can't raise, the enormous budgets needed for national races, though, and those with the massive budgets of course aren't inclined to let others in.

This year people are disgruntled enough that it feels like there could be an opening to get into the discourse. The odds are well against it, but it'd be nice to see it happen.

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

This is why I was very likely to sign the petition even before knowing who it was for (though if it had been someone repugnant I'd've said no).

Actually, this is perhaps the best situation in which to sign the petition to get the third-party candidate onto the ballot: if the candidate in question shares a lot of positions with other candidates you find repugnant, they're likely to split the "pro-repugnant" vote and improve the chances of somebody you like getting elected. Just one more example of the perverse incentives in this voting system.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

They had segment with Gary Johnson on Samantha Bee and he came across as an engaging guy, if a bit of an oddball. I don't think this is the year, but stranger things have already happened.