North Carolina voters faced more than just the familiar choices of Democrat and Republican in the state’s major 2008 elections. Thanks to a change in the state’s ballot access law and the electoral performance of gubernatorial candidate Michael Munger, voters will continue to see a Libertarian Party option on the North Carolina ballot in the future. Munger, a Duke University political scientist, recently discussed third-party politics with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Kokai: First of all, let’s explain to people why it is that your performance — more than 2 percent, close to 3 percent of the vote in the gubernatorial race in 2008 — will mean that Libertarians will get to keep a spot on the ballot. Why is that , and how is that different from the situation we saw in the past?
Munger: The North Carolina General Assembly changed the law in August 2006 from 10 percent [of the vote in a given election] for a party to stay on the ballot down to 2 percent, and it’s only [the elections] for president or governor. So it’s a very restrictive standard. Even now it’s four times as big as in other states, where the average is one-half of 1 percent. But still, 2 percent is something more manageable. So we really had to fight for that 2 percent. I had hoped for rather more. I got more votes than any Libertarian candidate ever had — more than 120,000. The problem was that there were so many voters, so many first-time voters, people who voted straight party ticket, that it was only 2.9 percent [of the total], but it was enough. What that means is that for the next four years, there will be a Libertarian Party alternative on the ballot, 2010 and 2012.
Kokai: Why is it so important for people to have all these options, not just Democrat and Republican?
Munger: I think it’s important to note that voters get to decide whether it’s really important, but 18,000 people voted straight Libertarian Party ticket, and 120,000 voted for me. We had 130,000 [votes] — nearly 140,000 — for our Senate and lieutenant governor candidates. I think a lot of people are looking for some kind of choice. There is a lot of political science literature, Mitch, that shows having even a relatively weak third party … you have somebody out there to raise other questions and to say, what about this issue? That makes a big difference in the quality of the choices that you get from the two big parties, so having me, I’m hoping, will make the two parties more honest.
Kokai: We mentioned at the outset that your day job is being professor at Duke University …
Munger: And Wednesday morning I was glad to have that. Being a tenured professor at Duke is not a bad gig.
Kokai: … in political science, economics, and public policy. Putting on that [professor’s] hat, how does having these alternate voices — whether it’s Libertarians or Greens or any other third party — improve the level of public policy?
Munger: There is research in political science that having a third party at all that gets 3 or 4 percent has two big effects. First, it reduces corruption. It means there are fewer arrests and less public money is misspent if you just compare across states. The other one is that the state-sponsored parties themselves are more responsive. They don’t just go to the median, the middle distribution of voters, and then auction off policy. And that’s what we’ve seen in North Carolina. We have what’s called the “pay-to-play” system, where there is an actual auctioning of public policy. Having a third party may help prevent that.
Kokai: We touched on the good news, and near the end of that last answer you got to some of the bad news about the way the system is set up here in North Carolina. Going through your campaign, what were some of the other obstacles that you ran into that North Carolina’s system should not set out in front of a potential candidate?
Munger: Well, I think we should not decertify parties in the sense that we throw people out of registrations. We had 13,000 registered Libertarians in 2006, and the state changed all of them against their will to unaffiliated. Then when we got on the ballot again, none of those people were contacted and told that Libertarian was an option. I don’t really think that it’s a violation of my rights to say that I don’t get to run for office. It’s a violation of voters’ rights because they don’t get to vote for the party of their choice. I actually think that’s unconstitutional. North Carolina’s laws are way too restrictive.
We also encountered over and over again the difficulties just of registration — the forms. If you see MoveOn.org, or if you go to one of your counties and ask for a registration form, until the last couple weeks [of the 2008 campaign], Libertarian was not an option, even though we’d been qualified since May.
So why is it that the state goes so far out of its way not to have even the common courtesy of inclusion of your name? The thing that we’re working on right now is the income tax, Mitch. I don’t know if most people know this, but on the income tax you have options where you can donate money to party campaigns. You can donate to the Democrats or to the Republicans, and the third option is “Other.” And if you donate to other it gets split between the Democrats and Republicans. The Libertarians don’t get any. So we’re trying to sue about that, and the state attorney general’s office I think basically agrees that the question is, how can they get it changed? That is, are they going to make a recommendation to the governor that the way that’s set up is changed?
As it stands, you’re not allowed to make a voluntary contribution to the Libertarian Party even though we have ballot-access status equal to the Democrats or Republicans.
Kokai: Now that the party has ballot-access status, how does it change preparations for the elections coming up in 2010, and especially when the governor’s office is back up for grabs in 2012?
Munger: There are two things. First, we don’t have to get the darn signatures. We don’t have to spend a quarter-million dollars dissipating all of our time and resources just to get the signatures. So we’ll have more money, more time. And the second thing is, I’m going to travel around the state, and I think a lot of the other Libertarian statewide candidates are going to travel around this state and work on organizing counties. We want to have at least the 20 largest counties to be well-organized in the sense that they have meetings, they have a large number of registered Libertarians, and we get the message out to say, “This is a real alterative.” To do that, you have to work at the grass-roots level.
Kokai: Most of the listeners of this program probably are familiar with Libertarians, but for those who have heard the name and don’t really know anything other than it’s a third party and another option besides Democrats and Republicans, remind us what it is that Libertarians believe in and what they would bring to the table for most North Carolinians.
Munger: Most people think of Libertarians as being socially very liberal and economically very conservative. I would say that the Libertarians are consistent. We want people to take personal responsibility for their own lives, but we also want people to be able to realize all the fruits of their own labors and not have it be taken away, or as Barack Obama said, “Spread around.” The real thing, the simplest description of what Libertarians want, is a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution. There are many things that government does that are outside of its constitutional scope. Let’s refocus, let’s cut spending by making government do only those things it’s supposed to do, and then let’s try to make it do it well.
Kokai: Do you think now — with ballot access and people having a chance to hear more about the Libertarian ideas — that you will see a growth and support over the years?
Munger: A lot of people say, “I’d like to vote for you, but I don’t want to waste my vote.” The question is, are they going to continue to be satisfied with two really inadequate choices? Having a third choice isn’t going to matter unless enough people exercise it and say, “I’m going to step outside the box. I’m going to vote for someone who’s a little bit different because I’m not satisfied with the other choices.” So that’s really up to the voters. I’m going to try to put that message out there. If the voters will help support the Libertarians, if the voters will say, “I’m not satisfied with the choices.” … Political scientists call this “voting the LOTE” — the lesser of two evils. If you always vote the lesser of two evils, it means you’re voting your fears and not your dreams. If you always vote your fears, your fears are going to come true, and that’s the kind of the government we’ve got now.