Numerous candidates for statewide office, including Libertarians, a Green and Tea Party candidate, in Pennsylvania were forced to withdraw from their respective races in recent weeks following Democratic and Republican led challenges to their ballot access petitions. The ballot purge has drawn a fair amount of attention to the disparity and double standard governing ballot access rules for Democrats and Republicans on the one hand, and everyone else on the other. The Scranton Times Tribune writes:
State law requires a Republican or Democrat to obtain 2,000 petition signatures for a statewide race. Candidates not affiliated with either major party must obtain a number of signatures equal to 2 percent of the highest vote total from the most recent statewide election. For 2010, that number is more than 19,000, more than nine times more than the big-party candidates.
Lawmakers should liberalize those petition rules in the name of democracy, and in order to expand the pool of ideas available to voters.
More proof on the existence of the Establishment Duopoly inhabited by the Democans and the Republicrats!
This so obviously violates equal protection under the law and one person one vote that it isn’t even funny.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has had editorials about Nader’s legal problems with ballot access here – very favorable ones, too. I don’t know if they’ve said anything about this, though.
There were some demonstrations about this issue, too, I believe.
I would be willing to bet this type of editorial will not grace the pages of major papers in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. Probably not Harrisburg, either.