How the Major Parties Cheat in Election Law: A Guide to why Third Parties can't get on the Ballots.
Jay Bates
The two party political system produces limited voter choice, limited options for democracy as a whole, and in general provides everyone but the parties themselves restrictions on how they may function politically. From the local levels of government to the highest levels of the federal government, Republicans and Democrats have a stranglehold on the political process of the United States. While in recent years citizens have seen ethics scandals, lobbyist scandals, and campaign contribution scandals and the accompanying Congressional hearings and reform legislation that usually come on the heels of such things…and nothing has really changed.
The question readers may be asking is "How do illegal campaign contributions deprive me of my right to vote or undermine democracy?" The answer is actually quite simple. We have campaign finance laws in this country to promote transparency…so that voters can see who is supporting whom. This enables voters to make a determination as to the political motivations and goals of the candidate, since a candidate who receives millions of dollars from one group or individual isn't likely to take a congressional voting position contrary to their supporters' positions. To give a clear analogy, it isn't likely that the National Organization for Women (a pro-choice group) is going to plow a million dollars into the campaign coffers of a pro-life candidate if that candidate is truly pro-life. Campaign contributions provide a clear window into how a candidate is likely to vote on particular issues that touch on their donors' interests. If you allow candidate and donors to hide their relationship through what is tantamount to money laundering, you in essence allow for voters to be potentially deceived as to whom exactly they are voting for. When the rich and powerful in this country are allowed to skirt campaign finance laws by laundering their contributions to candidates through holding companies, relatives, employees, and various other entities, the voter is deprived of the transparency that is so essential to making an informed vote.
In the current two party political system, you have only to follow the money to see which way a candidate will vote. It costs millions of dollars to get elected to a congressional seat or to the Presidency, and it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to get elected to statewide office. Only one group of people benefit when the criteria for election in this country is directly correlated to how much campaign cash a candidate can raise: the wealthy. Making money the basis for a successful candidacy is in itself a subversion of democracy, because it ensures that those with the greater amounts of money can support candidates who will bolster their already advantageous position. It also ensures that the average voter will decrease in importance, because he or she can only vote…and a vote just isn't what it was meant to be anymore.
Money is used in campaigns to purchase advertising that vilifies, promotes fear, and in general distracts the average voters from actual issues that are relevant to them. Our real wages have fallen, manufacturing jobs have gone overseas, our educational system is underfunded in many instances, and millions of Americans are struggling to afford access to basic healthcare. In the meantime, political advertisements zero in on fringe issues like abortion and gay marriage to incite average voters. In all truth, no meaningful legislation has been passed at the federal level of government on those two issues in twenty years, and yet one would think that they consume the federal agenda given the amount of political advertisement devoted to them in an average election cycle. However, money drives the way people vote, and when people see massive amounts of advertising on those issues, they vote for the candidate that they identify with on said issues, believing that he or she stands with them on the issues. That candidate then goes off to the statehouse or the Congress and votes on a wide array of bills that have little to do with abortion or gay marriage, and everything to do with the moneyed interests of large campaign donors.
Money is the tool through which those who fund the two party political system manage to divert attention away from the actual direction of candidate loyalties. Money is the sword that cuts the average voter away from his representation, ensuring that Congressmen will only encounter lobbyists and the interests that they represent. Money is the major reason why a third party rarely ever gets on the ballot. In order to get on the ballot in many national or state elections, you have to either be the nominee of one of the two major parties or you have to have enough money to fund a petition drive that will collect enough signatures to get you included on the ballot. Most third parties strike a chord with average voters who simply don't have the sort of financial wherewithal to drop a thousand dollars or more on a plate at a fundraising dinner.
Money is the tool through which those who fund the two party political system manage to divert attention away from the actual direction of candidate loyalties. Money is the sword that cuts the average voter away from his representation, ensuring that Congressmen will only encounter lobbyists and the interests that they represent. Money is the major reason why a third party rarely ever gets on the ballot. In order to get on the ballot in many national or state elections, you have to either be the nominee of one of the two major parties or you have to have enough money to fund a petition drive that will collect enough signatures to get you included on the ballot. Most third parties strike a chord with average voters who simply don't have the sort of financial wherewithal to drop a thousand dollars or more on a plate at a fundraising dinner.
This blog is intended to show readers how both of the major parties cheat in election law and more importantly, why they cheat. It will show how the wealthiest individuals in this country shape democracy for the rest of us by virtue of their disproportionate financial influence on elections. It will show how third parties are effectively excluded from the election process by state election laws that are designed to require third party candidates to have vast sums of money to fund organizational efforts so that they can actually be included on a ballot. Finally, it will trace how all of this amounts to a disenfranchisement of sorts for average voters by denying them alternative choices to the two major parties. A solution will be presented at the conclusion of this blog that demonstrates how it is possible to correct the current system with concrete action.
State Election Laws and the Stifling of Third Parties
State Election Laws are designed by the two major parties to limit the participation of other parties in the electoral process. They are written to place the bar for party recognition quite high, high in the sense that a new party would have to meet the organizational standard of the two major parties. As I have noted in the above paragraphs, this requires great deals of money.
Take Ohio, for example. One cannot simply organize a group of voters and declare that by virtue of their mobilization and affiliation with one another they are a political party. The process entails much more than that. For starters, you have to be recognized by the state. The state determines what constitutes a political party and what does not constitute a political party. In Ohio, any potential party has to go and get the signatures of registered voters in an amount that is equal to one percent of the registered voters of the state. In 2004, that would have meant collecting 32,290 signatures from registered voters.
Take Ohio, for example. One cannot simply organize a group of voters and declare that by virtue of their mobilization and affiliation with one another they are a political party. The process entails much more than that. For starters, you have to be recognized by the state. The state determines what constitutes a political party and what does not constitute a political party. In Ohio, any potential party has to go and get the signatures of registered voters in an amount that is equal to one percent of the registered voters of the state. In 2004, that would have meant collecting 32,290 signatures from registered voters.
Sounds simple, right? But consider that when voters register, they register largely as Democrats and Republicans to prevent cross voting in primaries. The state of Ohio requires that a prospective third party go to registered voters who are already affiliated with the two major parties in order to get the requisite signatures in order to be recognized! You can then see the difficulty that third parties face.
However, there is another way for third parties to be recognized in the state of Ohio. If you want, you can nominate a candidate for governor or president in the state of Ohio, and if that candidate wins 5% of the vote for their respective office, the state will then recognize your party. However, the state won't grant the candidate political party affiliation on the ballot! That is, the state will not allow a candidate to have his party affiliation listed by his name on the ballot, and therefore the candidate technically isn't polling for a third party! There is no real way around going to registered Republican and Democratic voters in order to get the signatures necessary to start your own third party.
However, let's say for a moment that you do attempt to get the one percent number of signatures you'd need to be recognized as a political party in Ohio. You'd be going door to door in a grassroots effort to collect those signatures, and you'd largely be doing it as an unknown group. Most people in this country receive their political information from the media, and the media is largely a tool of two party politics, given that it is owned by the corporate interests who daily lobby the two party system for legislation that is favorable to their financial interests.
How likely is it that you're going to invited into a person's house to present your political party's views to them one on one in order to persuade them to sign a petition that will gain your group recognition in the eyes of the state election officials of Ohio? Essentially the laws are stacked against third party mobilization and organization in such a way that the dominant two party system is the only one that can thrive and succeed. The laws require that anyone who feels disaffected with the two party system effectively has to ask registered Democrats and Republicans for permission to mobilize so that their party affiliation can be included on election ballots!
If you don't believe requirements such as the aforementioned demonstrate a clear bias against third party political organization, consider the requirements that the state of Ohio has for independent candidates. If you wish to register your candidacy as independent and therefore free of party affiliation, you only need 5,000 signatures. The state of Ohio and the two party system that governs it clearly wish to stifle efforts to mobilize a third party alternative to their own system. By raising the bar some twenty-five to thirty-thousand votes for a third party affiliated candidate, the state clearly signals its bias against third party candidacies and alternative political parties that dissent against the dominant two party system.
An independent candidate who is less likely to present a lasting threat as far as any permanent organization that would challenge the existing two party system is allowed on ballots in Ohio with 5,000 votes precisely because he represents less of a threat to the two party system. In many states, candidates who are affiliated with the Green Party or some other such alternative party find themselves unable to put their party affiliation on the ballot because of the difference in signature requirements that separate third party and independent ballot requirements. The net result of such policies is that the voter goes to the polls and sees a candidate on the ballot but has no frame of reference to place that candidate within because the candidate's political affiliation is left off of the ballot due to restrictive state laws. In a sense, they don't know who or what they'd be voting for if they cast their vote for the candidate.
The truly irritating part of such requirements is that courts have generally upheld the state's election laws, which are designed to frustrate efforts of third parties to mobilize effectively. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals actually held in Schrader v. Blackwell that Ohio law was reasonable given Ohio's interest in avoiding "confusion, deception, and frustration of the democratic process." I would submit that Ohio's laws are designed to promote confusion, deception, and frustration of the democratic process by making it harder for voters and citizens to effectively mobilize in opposition to the two party system.
By keeping political affiliation off of the ballot of candidates who fail to obtain thirty thousand plus signatures, Ohio is attempting to confuse voters as to what a particular candidate actually stands for. It is also seeking to retard efforts by those citizens who have mobilized behind that candidate to establish a viable third party alternative to the two party system that pervades our democracy and writes such ridiculous election laws in the first place. Suggesting that those parties can go to appellate courts to overturn such laws is laughable as well, when the courts are stocked with partisan judges who are products by and large of the two party system of politics. They are nominated and confirmed by their respective parties to the very bench they hold as judges! Asking them to allow for third party political mobilization is akin to going to a National Socialist and asking him for more lenient policies towards Jews and Gypsies! Their existence and success is predicated on keeping alternatives off of the ballot to begin with because they are partisans!
By keeping political affiliation off of the ballot of candidates who fail to obtain thirty thousand plus signatures, Ohio is attempting to confuse voters as to what a particular candidate actually stands for. It is also seeking to retard efforts by those citizens who have mobilized behind that candidate to establish a viable third party alternative to the two party system that pervades our democracy and writes such ridiculous election laws in the first place. Suggesting that those parties can go to appellate courts to overturn such laws is laughable as well, when the courts are stocked with partisan judges who are products by and large of the two party system of politics. They are nominated and confirmed by their respective parties to the very bench they hold as judges! Asking them to allow for third party political mobilization is akin to going to a National Socialist and asking him for more lenient policies towards Jews and Gypsies! Their existence and success is predicated on keeping alternatives off of the ballot to begin with because they are partisans!
Why Two Party Politics Succeeds: Follow the Money
In the 2006 elections, the federal candidates alone spent some 1.4 billion dollars on their campaigns. If you want to see just how skewed the contributions are to political campaigns, there are 222,940,420 adults in the United States. Of those adults, itemized campaign contributions of $200 or more came from less than two-tenths of one percent. Two tenths of one percent of the adults in the United States fund the two party system. Care to guess who they are? They are largely comprised of the richest one to five percent of Americans, and they get what they pay for.
The vast majority of campaign contributions in this country in the 2006 election came from businesses, which contributed a whopping 1.16 billion dollars or 73.5% of the total monies given to campaigns. They were followed by labor, which managed a paltry 66 million dollars, or 4.2% of the total monies given. Do you see why 1 out of every 6 manufacturing jobs disappeared to overseas markets over the past seven years now?
The majority of Americans favor a government that is business friendly in the sense that it creates good paying jobs with benefits like health insurance and pensions. However, in today's business climate, business leaders abhor the idea of incurring expenses like insurance and retirement plans that could eat into their shareholder dividends (again, the richest one to five percent comprise the majority of shareholder wealth in this country), and they have started contributing money to elect candidates who will stand idly by while they shuffle good paying jobs overseas and cut benefits in order to deliver the maximum dividend payout to the wealthiest Americans who comprise the investor class.
Not surprisingly, they are quite in favor the existing two party system and have no issues with its efforts to stifle democratic expression either through vote suppression or through state laws that make it difficult for citizens to mobilize a third party that can put itself on the ballot.
Not surprisingly, they are quite in favor the existing two party system and have no issues with its efforts to stifle democratic expression either through vote suppression or through state laws that make it difficult for citizens to mobilize a third party that can put itself on the ballot.
Given that many third party efforts begin as reactions against the injustice of such things, the corporations and wealthy classes see such efforts as a threat to their hegemonic power. They are right to see it as such. Their tyranny of two party politics produces results that are largely one sided and favorable to their position. Under the current system, their two party government gives them what they pay it to produce regardless of the effect on the middle class or lower income voters.
Tyranny is never about ideology or principles. It's about good old-fashioned material greed. The Communist Party bosses in the old Soviet Union constructed a tyranny not of ideology, but of greed and power hoarding. While the average Russian citizen stood in line at grocery stores only to arrive inside and find the shelves empty, the Communist Party bosses and their cronies had plenty of food and lived in luxury at dachas on the outskirts of the gloomy cities that they had built apartment buildings for the lower classes. The tyranny of the two party system in America boils down to material greed as well.
The upper classes have a stranglehold on our democracy, and their greatest weapon in perpetuating their less than democratic policies is the two party system. This two party system has corrupted every last vestige of our government from the local levels to the highest corridors of power, and it must be stopped if we are to reclaim democracy in a true sense. If you want your vote to count, to have meaning, if you want to vote for a candidate that truly represents your interest and political beliefs…then the two party system in its current form has to be done away with.
We cannot get justice or equality at the ballot boxes, as they are manned and overseen by partisan officials who are loyal to the two major parties rather than a democratic ideal. We cannot get it in the courts, which are stocked with partisan judges who deliver decisions that allow two party tyrannies to be perpetuated through law.
The Movement's Solution
The majority of Americans don't have a great deal of money, as the richest one to five percent of the population owns upwards of eighty percent of the country as a whole. We aren't powerful politically or socially, owing to the way that the two party system has disenfranchised us by forcing us to vote for one of two potential parties, neither of which truly represent us once elected. We have been divided by a two party system that seeks to polarize us along racial, ethnic, gender, social, economic, religious, and orientation lines. But regardless of our differences, we have one unifying motivation: the desire to be represented by a government that reflects our popular will and respects our right as individuals to be politically self-determining. We desire freedom in place of tyranny, representation in the place of disenfranchisement, and an alternative to the current system.
We have one thing and one thing only that is to our advantage. We are a physical majority. We can flood the streets in peaceful but forceful demonstrations, and we can stop the wheels of production and industry cold by flooding the streets in protest and refusing to work another day until we are given emancipation. Every single elected representative of the U.S. Federal Government must step down and resign, and free and open elections must be held. Once the elections are held, then the judges must step down from their positions, to be replaced by judges that are nominated and appointed by the new government.
We must then turn our attention to the state and local levels of government and demand the same of those elected officials. We must turn to the media and demand that the airwaves that have previously been licensed to them at minimal cost by the FCC now come with the price of free political airtime during elections. This airtime and media exposure would be open to all candidates so that they could present their views to the voter through the mass media regardless of their financial standing. Let their ideas persuade the voter. Let the voter choose!
You have the power to join your voice and your body to this movement, to become committed to the ideal that we have the right to true political representation rather than the illusory representation that we've had for too long under the two major political parties. This is a revolutionary idea only to those within the existing power structure, who believe it is their right and their entitlement to perpetuate a government that represents their socially and economically elite minority by virtue of their possession of great wealth.
If you wish to be free, if you would have a vote that counts and choice that matters, you have to fight for it. Don't assume that the individual rights that you are guaranteed on paper in the Constitution will be observed or respected automatically by those who comprise the two party tyranny. They see the Constitution as a mere rag of insignificance when it gets in the way of their accumulation of power and wealth. When we achieve a multi-party democracy that truly embodies and represents the spectrum of the American population, the fight will not be over. We must always be vigilant to fight off the encroachment of tyranny.
If you wish to be free, if you would have a vote that counts and choice that matters, you have to fight for it. Don't assume that the individual rights that you are guaranteed on paper in the Constitution will be observed or respected automatically by those who comprise the two party tyranny. They see the Constitution as a mere rag of insignificance when it gets in the way of their accumulation of power and wealth. When we achieve a multi-party democracy that truly embodies and represents the spectrum of the American population, the fight will not be over. We must always be vigilant to fight off the encroachment of tyranny.
Join the movement. Mobilize and fight to achieve a government that represents you and your interests, and an election process that presents options to you that fit your perspective and ideals!
Major Sources:
Ohio Election Laws
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/ebook/part2/candidate_ballot04.html
Donor Stats & Demographics
http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/DonorDemographics.asp?cycle=2006
Note: I verified the statistics and facts contained within these two websites through FEC filings, and through an examination of Ohio state codes. To the best of my knowledge, they are factual and accurate. However, if you find error within the sites, please contact me here at Myspace with your findings so that I can immediately investigate. As always, I welcome your suggestions and comments.
To the Movement,
Jay Bates
Major Sources:
Ohio Election Laws
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/ebook/part2/candidate_ballot04.html
Donor Stats & Demographics
http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/DonorDemographics.asp?cycle=2006
Note: I verified the statistics and facts contained within these two websites through FEC filings, and through an examination of Ohio state codes. To the best of my knowledge, they are factual and accurate. However, if you find error within the sites, please contact me here at Myspace with your findings so that I can immediately investigate. As always, I welcome your suggestions and comments.
To the Movement,
Jay Bates
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