The Chicago Sun-Times by way of Ballot Access News:
Pens are not always mightier than the sword.
In Illinois, volunteers have collected tens of thousands of signatures on petitions to get candidates representing “non-established” political parties on the November ballot.
But because of Illinois’ onerous requirements for anyone who isn’t running as a Democrat or a Republican, most of those signatures won’t matter. That’s a problem the state needs to fix.
The article concludes:
Illinois should fix this now rather than wait on the courts, but nobody expects that. As we wrote on this issue back in 1990, “The sun may rise in the west before the Legislature ever corrects this injustice.”
All the fighting over signatures in every election cycle leaves little time for smaller parties to actually get out and talk about the issues.
We thought encouraging debate was the whole point of democracy.
I voted in that CA election and had no problem at all with the ballot. Neither did anyone else as far as I know. I didn’t quote that part of the editorial partially for length/copyright reasons but partially because I do not agree with that part. Furthermore, there are states that have virtually no balot access barriers and they don’t get anywhere near 135 candidates in their elections. Ballot crowding is a complete myth.
>It’s reasonable to set a higher bar for smaller political parties looking to get on the ballot. No >one wants a replay of the 2003 California gubernatorial election, when 135 candidates were >on the ballot.
Why not? The ballot was less confusing than the famous butterfly ballot. The election seemed to go just fine, with no major hiccups except who was elected.
Maybe instead we could have a computerized ballot that works like online polls. All candidates are compared on Isidewith, and candidates are paired up with the most similar candidates. People are asked which of each pair they prefer, then asked the same question pairwise on their winners, etc., until its down to one, with points given for each level.