Topic: Election 2008
A Big Victory for the LP in North Carolina Nobody won anything, but one LP candidate took advantage of NC's new progressive attitude toward third parties.by RS Davis
(libertarian)
Friday, November 7, 2008
See that guy up there? That's Michael Munger, Libertarian candidate for Governor of North Carolina. He did something truly great for the LP in that state.
Getting on the ballot - much less elected - as a third party candidate is a monumental undertaking, with all the money that must be spent and all the work that must be done. Candidates spend most of their time just trying to get on the ballot, while their mainstream opponents are out kissing babies and promising largess from the public treasury. And that is all assuming that the powers that be will follow their own election laws.
For example, Texas gave the dupoloy parties a free pass onto the ballot, even when they flouted election law, Louisiana left LP candidates off the ballot because Hurricaine Gustav closed election offices the last week of the deadline for submitting signatures, and Connecticut omitted LP candidates from the ballot because state election officials lost 116 pages of signatures.
It's enough that Reason Magazine writer Radley Balko said, "Between gerrymandering their districts to ensure a friendly electorate, campaign finance legislation, debate rules that effectively bar third-party participants, onerous ballot access rules, and the privileges of office, the Democrats and Republicans have ensured that the vast majority of the country will choose only between one of two candidates this year - candidates who, when it comes right down to it, really aren't all that different."
And yet, breaking from years of anti-third party legislation, North Carolina has become unusually friendly toward them - in stark contrast to the momentum of the rest of the country.
Up until 1888, there were no ballot access requirements in NC, when they stipulated that a third party candidate must obtain 5,000 signatures to get on the ballot. (At the time, that represented about .15% of voters from the previous election.)
In 1929, they changed the requirement to 10,000 signatures, and no one was able to meet that criteria until 1980, when the Socialist Worker's Party qualified for the ballot. Of course, they couldn't have that happen, so they changed it back to 5,000 signatures, but required everyone who signed the petition to change their party affiliation to that party. This not only silenced the voices of duopoly voters that wanted to see third parties on the ballot, but was in actuality a way to get a registered list of Socialists.
In 1982, the Supreme Court found the re-registering stipulation unconstitutional, so the state again changed the ballot-access requirement to 2% of the last gubernatorial vote, which at the time represented a change from 5,000 signatures to about 35,000.
But then, in 2006, North Carolina changed. They decided to swim against the tide of two-party tyranny, and they actually made it easier for third parties to get on the ballot by lowering the standard for automatic inclusion on the ballot from a 10% vote threshold in statewide elections to only 2%.
Enter Michael Munger, the Libertarian Party candidate for governor with a PhD in economics from my hometown school, Washington University. He was a staff economist for the Federal Trade Commission in the first Reagan Administration. He taught economics at Duke, the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas, and Dartmouth. He has also co-authored or edited four books - Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice (University of Michigan Press, 1994), Analytical Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1997), Empirical Studies in Comparative Politics (Kluwer Academic Press, 1998), and Analyzing Policy: Choices, Conflicts, and Practices, published in August 2000 by W.W. Norton.
Clearly an impressive resume.
Munger didn't take the state by storm, though - he certainly didn't win - but he did manage to pull in 3% of the vote, ensuring that for the next four years, the LP will have automatic ballot access in North Carolina elections, including the 2012 election. Which means, at least in NC, Libertarian candidates can be out there too, kissing babies and promising to shrink the public treasury.
Hopefully, by then, the electorate will see that the audacity is in hoping to find any meaningful change from the two major parties, and people will be ready to hear the voice of a third party.
And in North Carolina, it will be that much easier to hear that voice.
Barr Gets Smacked Down Again! Published: October 24, 2008 Man, this election year has REALLY shown how the two-party system strangles third parties...
3rd Parties Get No Respect Published: October 9, 2008 Barr left off the Louisiana ballot. Nice double-standard, there.
Obama/Barr '08 Published: September 30, 2008 Strange bedfellows could make for some interesting politics.
Why Bob Barr Is Right Published: September 26, 2008 Inside the Texas Election Code, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tyranny.
Barr Gets Smacked Down Published: September 25, 2008 The Texas Supreme Court makes a decision about Obama and McCain's right to be on the ballot after missing the deadline.
Barr Finally Fights For Texas Published: September 19, 2008 Obama and McCain didn't file in time to be included on the Texas ballot, and Bob Barr is trying to make sure they aren't.
Barr Fights for Texas Published: September 2, 2008 This battle could mean big things for the Libertarian Party
The views expressed in this
article are those of RS Davis only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. RS Davis is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Great research, good flow, entertaining (human interest) and educational (ballot access laws, NC history). One of the best articles I've read on the Chart.
Some magazine should be paying to fly you around and embed you in campaigns, like Reason does for Dave Weigel, for example. Alas, you and I have to sit at home and look things up.
Anyway, in case your readers would like to read more about Munger and his campaign, here's the link to Weigel's article:
Thanks, George! I totally agree - I should be paid to do this, hahahahaha....
Interesting article by Weigel - hadn't seen that, and I'm a Reason junkie. I think it is the best pound-for-pound libertarian publication on the planet. Totally my dream job.
Why did Reason try to stab my boy RP in the back over those stupid news letters? Because he wouldn't run as a libertarian? They ruined my attitude but maybe I'll get over it eventually.
Posted By: D. Frank Robinson
Date: 2008-11-13 21:14:19
So it's two percent to stick on the ballot.
Look for that to change upwards to over three percent. The Courts will look the other way because it's in the name of orderly administration of elections, avoiding voters confusion, and keeping out the frivolous candidates, and blah, blah, arrgg.
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