RALEIGH — When you go to the polls in North Carolina, you have less freedom to choose who you want to elect than citizens of virtually every other state. A recent N.C. Supreme Court decision will continue to restrict our electoral freedom. However, the General Assembly is considering a bill that would protect our rights.
Before a political party can get a candidate on the ballot, it must obtain signatures equivalent to 2 percent of the number of individuals who voted in the previous gubernatorial election. This currently amounts to about 85,000 signatures.
Once reaching the ballot, the candidate must receive 2 percent of the statewide vote in the next election to keep the party active for in the following election campaign. If the candidate doesn’t receive 2 percent, the arduous process of acquiring signatures must start again.
North Carolina has the nation’s third-most restrictive ballot access laws for political parties. This 85,000 signature requirement is draconian. Thirty-three states require 10,000 signatures or less to secure ballot access.
North Carolina also makes it more difficult than most states in allowing independent candidates for Congress to gain access to the ballot. In fact, in the 110 years the state has printed election ballots, an independent candidate for Congress has never appeared on the official North Carolina ballot.
Fortunately, there are efforts to make it reasonable for smaller parties and independent candidates to appear on the ballot. The Electoral Reform Act of 2011 has been introduced in the state House and Senate. The law would lower the number of signatures required to gain ballot access to 10,000.
This law has grown in importance now that the state Supreme Court has held that our extreme ballot access laws are constitutional.
In defending the law, the court explained that the law wasn’t too severe, since the Libertarian Party was able to secure the necessary 69,734 signatures for the 2008 election.
By defending the law, the court punished smaller parties for the efforts of some very committed citizens to overcome incredible obstacles. A mandate like the one in our current ballot access law can be both an unreasaonable and an unconstitutional burden but still be possible to overcome.
The court also failed to recognize that the time and money spent collecting signatures takes away from much-needed time for other endeavors — such as promoting candidates and signing up voters. Instead of raising money and preparing for the election, smaller political parties have to exhaust their efforts just to ensure they can participate.
In addition, the court showed no concern for the numerous parties that weren’t able to satisfy these stringent requirements. The Green Party, for example, has never qualified for the ballot in North Carolina.
The court’s failure to protect our freedoms has left the responsibility with the General Assembly. For nearly 50 years, from 1935 through 1981, state law required 10,000 signatures for a party to reach the ballot. The proposed law simply would restore this more reasonable threshold.
To be sure, some ballot access protections are warranted. North Carolina doesn’t want frivolous candidates or an excessive number of candidates on the ballot. Critics of broader ballot access say too many candidates can confuse voters.
But we can be protected from these concerns without being so extreme. There’s no evidence of rampant confusion in elections connected to lengthy ballots in other states with less restrictive access. Unless you believe that citizens in most other states are smarter than us, this isn’t much of an argument.
North Carolinians should be able to join with like-minded individuals to form political parties that offer candidates for public office. Freedom of association is being trampled if these candidates can’t reasonably appear on the ballot.
When severe limits on ballot access prevent candidates from facing voters, the right to vote is weakened. A system where only the two major parties, with limited exceptions, ever have access to the ballot is not a legitimate system of voting. Our current biased system, in essence, is pre-selecting candidates before citizens even go to the polls.
The General Assembly can protect the rights of candidates who want to be considered for elected office and the rights of citizens to freely elect candidates they support. The state has no business blocking the public from electing the representatives they prefer.
Daren Bakst is director of legal and regulatory studies at the John Locke Foundation.