Third-party candidates should appear on ballot
Compared to other countries, political parties outside the U.S.’s two-party duopoly tend to operate on the peripheries, and it’s not hard to comprehend why.
In parliamentary systems, like they have in Canada and much of Europe, third parties can be folded into coalitions, given a voice, and their interests can be addressed. In the United States, though, third parties have traditionally been viewed as havens for cranks and eccentrics who are tilting at windmills and have little hope of ever holding real power. At worst, third-party candidates are perceived as spoilers who siphon votes away from candidates who have an actual shot at getting the brass ring – remember Ralph Nader in 2000?
Third parties are inescapably caught in a Catch-22 – most voters don’t want their votes to be wasted, so they don’t vote for third-party candidates, perpetuating their obscurity and marginalization.
And Pennsylvania has not made the lot of third-party candidates any easier. It has fashioned and enforced onerous election laws that seem designed with one purpose in mind – to keep them off the ballot. Where Republicans and Democrats have only needed 2,000 signatures or so to get on the ballot, their lower-profile counterparts in the Green or Libertarian parties have needed upwards of 67,000 signatures. It’s plainly unfair and blatantly undemocratic.
Fortunately, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Stengel saw through the absurdity of Pennsylvania’s laws regarding third-party candidates and ruled in July that those laws were unconstitutional. But the administration of Gov. Tom Wolf will instead appeal the judge’s decision, it was announced last week. That’s a mistake. This is a fight that should not be pursued any further.
Without going into specifics, a Wolf spokesman said that the administration disagreed with certain aspects of the ruling. Questions have been raised by some observers on whether Stengel’s ruling spoke to the more strenous requirements that are placed on minor parties to get on the ballot, or the tremendous legal bills third-party candidates rack up when their nomination petitions are challenged, which happens frequently. In any event, the ruling should be clarified and voters should have the option of voting for the party and candidates they want. If they happen to be a Green, a Libertarian, a member of the Prohibition Party, the Socialist Workers Party, or whatever, then so be it.
Stengel wrote, “The ability of the minor parties to organize and voice their views has been decimated” because of Pennsylvania’s excessively stringent rules.
Wolf, and many of his allies in the Democratic Party, have rightly assailed efforts by Republicans to put hurdles between voters and polling places by the enactment of voter ID laws, even though these laws place undue burdens on poor, elderly and minority voters and there is not the slightest scintilla of evidence that voter fraud is widespread. In light of their support for increased voter participation, trying to bar other candidates from the ballot carries a scent of hypocrisy.
Elections should be won based on the attributes of candidates and the power of their ideas, not because the system has been gamed to prevent voters from choosing alternatives.