Some Ideas to Achieve Equal Ballot Access

The number one item on SWGAPolitics.com’s 2010 Legislative Agenda is Equal Ballot Access, and I’ve been pushing hard for new members in the Facebook group recently.

It is not enough to simply push for members in a Facebook group though. To be viable as an idea, proposals need to be put forth to correct the wrongs you see. A week ago, I put on the group a discussion topic for “best approaches” on this issue.

In particular, I mentioned:

1) Definitions of “Party”
2) Amount of Petition Signatures
3) Pool of Petition Signatures (voters in last election vs all registered voters, etc)
4) Additional races where candidates above X percent grant party full ballot access (currently only GAGOV and POTUS count – and NATIONAL vote is counted for POTUS, rather than Ga vote)
5) Lowering X percent from #4 (currently at 20%)

I now have bill proposals for each of these, though one of these bill proposals is an active project of a friend and the version I have may not be the most current version. Below the jump I have brief descriptions of the proposals I have, as well as links to the PDF files so you can see them for yourself.

The most extreme among these bills changes the very way a “Party” is defined in Georgia. Specifically, it eliminates the definition of “political body” (which is what the Libertarian Party of Georgia officially is under Georgia law right now), as well as that of “political party”, which is defined under current code as a political organization whose Governor candidate has received at least 20% of the Statewide vote or whose Presidential candidate has received at least 20% of the National vote. Instead, this bill redefines “political party” to the current definition of “political organizations”. The one thing that I could support changing about this bill (with reservation, but I would support it if it meant this bill could pass) is that I also eliminate the “subversive organization” clause in the current definition of “political organization”.

Next, the “Ballot Access Reform Act of 2009” is the bill which modifies both the amount of signatures needed on a nominating petition as well as the pool from which these ballots are needed. Specifically, it lowers the petitioning requirements for any office from 5% of the registered voters to 1% of the votes cast in the last election for that office.

Our next proposal does nothing more than cut the electoral results required under the current definition of “political party” in half (from 20% to 10%), as well as specifying that for the Presidential nominee, only the Georgia results count for this requirement, and not the national results.

Our final proposal not only lowers the electoral results needed to 10%, but also opens up the requirement from the Governor and Presidential races exclusively to any statewide race.

One legislator, who shall remain nameless at this time, has also told me he would introduce a bill allowing for “fusion ballots”, which is an idea I haven’t yet looked into but am certainly open to exploring.

So now we have a variety of proposals to correct this problem, let’s work to get at least one of them officially introduced, passed, and signed into law!