Indie candidates get the shaft?
Carla over at Preemptive Karma picks up on an interesting development in Oregon elections law that affects Indie candidates.
Citing The Oregonian newspaper article from this morning she explains that a barely noticed new law which took effect this month may make it next to impossible for an Independent candidate to get on the ballot.
The new law requires that anyone who votes in a primary election can't also help nominate an independent candidate and cannot sign a petition for more than one candidate to get on the ballot.
The law was passed after the Oregon Republicans and some conservatives tried to get Ralph Reed on the ballot in Oregon to siphon votes away from Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry.
Is this a power grab by the big two parties? Or is this a way to assure that people don't vote twice to nominate someone for a position?
Good questions. Sounds to me like another example of "divide and conquer" by the so-called two party system.
1 Comments:
One of the worst things about NY is that the two parties have a virtual lock on the ballot. Even the so called third parties have been co-opted by the two main parties. Even worse is that there are very few primaries worth voting in. Most candidates are picked by the party leaders. Case in point, when Gov Pataki announced support for DA Pirraro to run against Clinton, another GOPer, Mr Cox, immediately withdrew. Now that Pirraro has dropped out, he announced he is once again interested.
Also, I remember years ago, I think the Dole run for President, when the party used every trick in the book to keep Buchanan or McCain (sorry, my memories is fuzzy on the people involved) off the ballot.
Point being, that the system for getting on the ballot is very corrupt and geared to keeping the two party system in place. I do support some level of control, California's recall fiasco being a prime example of what can go wrong.
There has to be a fair balance of how a candidate can get on the ballot. Any rule that makes it cumbersome, I think, is wrong.
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