In the past couple of days, I’ve seen two blog posts describing developments in third parties’ attempts to gain access to the polls.
First, from the Political Wire:
This week in Illinois, challenges were filed with the Board of Elections to knock the Constitution, Independence, and Green Candidates off the ballot, according to Politics1. The conservative Constitution candidates have already been disqualified based on suspect petition signatures, and the liberal Independence candidates are expected to meet the same fate. The Green Party candidates may survive, however, because they submitted far more signatures than required.
While it’s true that you have to play by the rules when running for elected office, it’s kind of sad when political parties have to engage in the slimy game of getting opponents kicked off the ballot.
Meanwhile, Real Clear Politics mentions that the ACLU is suing Connecticut for its new campaign finance law, including:
[The new law] puts the two major parties at a huge advantage by giving them public funds for campaigns. To qualify for public funds, a minor party candidate not only has to raise a significant amount of money on his or her own, but he or she also needs to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures — a virtually impossible task, and one that was intended to be so by the Legislature.
These would be very significant if there actually were a viable third party in operation. That’s not the case today, although one can hope that the situation will change before 2008.