By Bob Geary
There
was a time in American history, Chatham County resident Ed King wants
us to know, when elections were chock full of different, often
progressive ideas. And voter turnout was high--about 80 percent of the
(admittedly quite limited) eligible adults voted in national elections,
not the current 50 percent.
The
time? 1876-1892. The reason? The proliferation of vigorous third
parties with their own views on what the United States--then putting
itself back together after the Civil War--ought to be.
Parties
like the Farmers Party, the Greenback Party, the Union Labor Party, and
the Peoples Party all sought to advance the interests of common folks
or some subset of them. All hoped, if not to supplant one of the two
major political parties (or, in the case of the South, the one
political party--the Democrats), then at least to put pressure on the
Democrats and Republicans to be more mindful of the masses and less
solicitous of the rich.
So what happened? Well, in King's view, ballot-access laws happened, and they killed third parties.
Until
1888, there were no ballot-access laws in the United States. In fact,
there were no printed ballots, or at least not "officially" printed.
Voters showed up at the polls with their own ballots, frequently ones
supplied to them by one party or another. It didn't matter if your
ballot was "Democrat," "Greenback" or your own concoction. You just
dropped it in the box.
Spin
the clock ahead one century-plus, and consider now what ballot-access
laws have done to your choices in North Carolina. There are no third
parties on the ballot. Rarely does anyone even run as an independent.
(Even Ralph Nader couldn't get on the N.C. ballot--either time.)
Indeed,
in this year's legislative elections, there's only one candidate
running, a Republican or a Democrat, in almost half of the Senate and
House districts.
And
why's that? Because our two big parties have combined to enact a set of
laws that effectively prevent anyone who's not a "D" or "R" from
getting on the ballot. (And they've divvied up the districts between
them by drawing weird--that is, gerrymandered--boundary lines.) North
Carolina's ballot requirements are considered among the most stringent,
if not the most stringent, in the country.
For
a third party in North Carolina to get its candidates listed and their
votes counted, it must collect almost 70,000 verified signatures from
all over the state. Since "verified" means actual registered voters,
and so many people aren't registered but will tell you they are, the
Libertarians in the past found they needed at least 100,000 signatures
to make the North Carolina ballot--which they collected eight different
times, only to be booted off after each succeeding election because
they hadn't gotten 10 percent of the total vote.
Well,
they're sick of it, so they're suing the state on grounds that they are
not receiving the "equal protection of the laws" guaranteed to all
citizens even if they're not Democrats or Republicans.
But
just in case the General Assembly would like to mend its ways, the
Libertarians are joining forces with the Green Party (which has never
gotten itself on the ballot), reform groups like the N.C. Public
Interest Research Group (NC PIRG) and Democracy North Carolina, and a
few interested citizens like Ed King in an effort to get the state's
ballot-access laws relaxed.
The
newly formed N.C. Open Elections Coalition met in public for the first
time Monday night in Raleigh, a gathering of some 35 people. They're
backing a reform measure, House Bill 88, that's currently lodged in a
Senate committee. The fact that the bill passed the House last year,
however, is not good news to them. Before it did, House Democrats
amended it to make it almost completely worthless; the coalition is
hoping the Senate will return it to its original form, cutting the
required number of signatures by 75 percent, and send it back to the
House before the current legislative session ends.
Most
states, the coalition notes, require 10,000 signatures or less for
third parties or independent candidates. Nine allow either with 5,000
names or fewer.
"Iraq, right now, has more political parties to choose from than we do in North Carolina," King said Monday night, laughing.
Added
Warren Murphy, representing the centrist reform group Common Cause
N.C.: "We're for open, honest and effective government. This isn't
open, it isn't honest, but it is effective--for the Democrats and
Republicans."
