The National Libertarian Party will host a symposium on what it calls a ballot access “crisis” for third parties later this month—the formal seminar plans to convene on August 19 at the Washington Hilton.
The Libertarian Party announced the event earlier this week through a press release. According to the release, the event will provide a networking opportunity and will include a discussion among various third-party leaders. The conversation will be moderated by Larry Sharpe, a Libertarian Party activist based in New York and a former candidate for the 2016 Libertarian Party Vice Presidential nomination.
Apart from Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle, the event will feature representatives from multiple political parties, including the People’s Party and the Constitution Party, alongside an independent candidate for the US Senate from New York. Notable figures participating include People’s Party Chair Nick Brana, Constitution Party Chair and former 2012 Vice Presidential nominee Jim Clymer, and Diane Sare, an independent candidate openly associated with the Lyndon LaRouche movement. Bill Redpath, a Senate candidate who formerly chaired the Libertarian National Committee and currently serves as the editor of Ballot Access News, will also contribute to the conversation.
“The state forces onerous ballot access restrictions on us because it knows we threaten their stranglehold on American voters,” McArdle is quoted in the release as saying about the event. “We’re coming together to peel back that stranglehold and give the voters a chance at better representation.”
The conversation will focus on strategies to circumvent the rising challenges to ballot access and debate access that many third party candidates frequently face. In particular, participants will focus on newly established petitioning and signature verification standards, which emerged in response to allegations of fraud following the 2020 election cycle. Event organizers attribute these standards to what they see as a current crisis and will examine ways to address the challenges they pose.
Readers of Independent Political Report can access the full press release on the Libertarian Party website here.
Jim, as I said, my personal hunch is that the trend reversed earlier than 2020. Richard Winger knows more than I do about it, so I’m only putting it as late as 2020 because he tracks these things a lot more closely than I do and has a filing system (and perhaps a better memory). I access the internet only with a phone, change phones often, don’t file or save anything, and it’s not my full time job or main hobby, so of course I can’t argue with him competently, but earlier than 2020 is my personal impression.
However I do remember that the context of that discussion was that the trend reversed in 2020, meaning an overall trend in proposed and passed legislation and ballot initiatives as well as court rulings. That trend didn’t stop with the easing of temporary covid measures, and was not prompted by them. It’s prompted by the increasingly nasty, accelerating, and evenly divided mutually negative bipartisanship between Democrats and Republicans.
You can fill in your own best guess of how far back that trend became overwhelming . What Richard Winger agreed with the position I take about was that since at least 2020, the collateral damage of that trend has overtaken the incremental efforts of ballot access activists which were gradually improving ballot access discrimination until then over the course of several decades. I know he comments here sometimes but if he doesn’t and you need his confirmation that he said that, try emailing him. I’m not sure if there’s a search function for comments at ballot access news.
Tully – The problem with the ballot access liberalization trend ending in 2020 is that 2020 was an aberration. Petition requirements were drastically cut or entirely eliminated due to Covid. I would like Richard Winger to weigh in on where ballot access generally stands today vs 2019. I think the states you mentioned (California, Arizona, Texas) had passed laws restricting ballot access earlier. California’s Top Two was in 2010, Arizona’s law in 2015, and Texas law was from 2019.
Yes, those state laws were devastating to down ballot 3rd party ballot access, I will grant that.
George – There is something of a chicken and egg problem: How to generate interest without media coverage when the media only covers things in which they believe people already have an interest.
I will suggest that the situation for the Libertarian party is better than it was. Relatively speaking. Unfortunately, much of the media coverage of the LP these days is of Mises Caucus lunacy.
FWIW, from 2014 – 2019, when I was still contributing to LPEDIA, I did some work on the page of newspapers and organizations that have endorsed Libertarian candidates. I found 40 and 43 in 2018 and 2016 vs 8 and 5 in 2014 and 2012.
One of those 40 in 2018 was the Worcester Telegram’s endorsement of Dan Fishman. He also got the Boston Globe’s endorsement.
So, I think media coverage will grow if there is a serious candidate generating public interest.
Definitely not an exhaustive list:
https://lpedia.org/wiki/List_of_Organizations_that_Endorse_Libertarian_Candidates#Statistics
The problem of news coverage is not exactly the same as the ballot access problem, although they have common roots. Basically, what it comes down to is that as negative partisanship escalates and becomes more and more bitter in a vicious cycle between Democrats and Republicans, “spoilers” get caught in the crossfire. A streaker on the field at a sports game might get booed, arrested, jailed, and fined. Someone skipping along picking daisies or carrying antiwar signs in no man’s land of trench war gets shot, most likely from both directions. The level of hostility between the Democrats and Republicans is accelerating its progression from something more akin to a sports rivalry towards something much more bitter, perhaps literal warfare, or perhaps hunger games levels of intensity.
What this means for ballot access is that laws are being made gradually more difficult . In BAN comments Richard Winger said that an overall liberalization trend in ballot access laws 1975-2020 has been reversed since then. My hunch is that it reversed a bit earlier, but I’ll defer to his expertise. I think this reversal is just beginning, as in still in early stages, so Jim is correct that the number of states the largest long term minor parties have presidential ballot access in hasn’t yet dropped precipitously. But the warning signs are there, from court rulings to legislative bills (only some of which have passed) to top two or top x initiatives (ditto). All signs point to it getting harder and harder for third parties to get and stay on the ballot, and field many candidates without undue hardship once they do, going forward. Those same signs point to such media coverage as they do receive, which was never great, also becoming more and more negative and unfair in the future .
This is a big part of why I’m coming to believe that the third party route for ideological political movements is a tactic whose time has passed (article forthcoming).
Also @ Jim ballot access is more than just presidential. For example, look at what California, Arizona and Texas have done to the Libertarians ability to run down ticket. There are other examples.
The largest challenge, which Independent Political Report is here to fix, is that press coverage of third parties, including both news and commentary, is often highly aberrant. Consider the Worcester Telegram’s coverage, last year in their special election issue, of the statewide offices, in which they reported that the Democrat was running unopposed, when there was a Libertarian in the race (Cris Crawford ended with more than 20% of the vote). Consider today’s Wall Street Journal column on third parties, which discussed at modest length two of the recent Green Party Presidential candidates, but never mentioned the Libertarian, No Labels, or Forward parties.
For third parties to advance, one of many things they need is honest, competent press coverage.
What crisis? According to the last report from BAN, Presidential ballot access for the Constitution party looks about where it has been at this point for the last couple of cycles and the Libertarian party is slightly ahead. The Green party is a few states behind, but not catastrophically.
New York seems to be the only major problem they all face.