SWGA Politics

Ballot Access Bill Introduced

Last week, State Senator David Shafer (R-Duluth) introduced a bill he calls the Voter Choice and Ballot Access Act, which is officially known as SB 359.

Equal ballot access is the number one issue on SWGAPolitics.com’s 2010 Legislative Agenda, and this bill is a solid step in that direction. The bill basically says that once a political organization has met the required hurdles to gain state wide ballot access, it would also be able to run candidates in all partisan races in this State – not just state wide. Currently, the Libertarian Party of Georgia is the only “third” party to do this, which means that under this bill Tom, Tim, myself, or any other Libertarian in the area could run for County Commission or even State Rep, if we so desired. Under current law, we could not without getting petition signatures from 5% of the registered voters in our district – and in one local election recently, the winner of the election only got 4.8% of the registered voters in the district to vote for him!

This bill also allows for a form of electoral fusion, whereby a political body (such as the Libertarian Party) could co-nominate candidates for offices along with an official “party” (such as the Democrats and Republicans). In other words, the Libertarian Party could co-nominate a candidate for State Rep with either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, if such candidate was acceptable to the LP.

The final thing this bill does is change the wording on the POTUS requirements for official “party” status to allow for 20% of the voters in the State of Georgia to satisfy this requirement. Under current law, even if the Libertarian Party’s Presidential nominee got 100% of the vote in Georgia, if that nominee only came out with 19.5% of the vote nationally, the Libertarian Party of Georgia would not have met the 20% requirement to attain full “party” status.

This bill does almost nothing for independent candidates, as their signature requirements are not touched in any way. Because of this, the bill is not perfect. With that said, however, this bill IS a solid step in the right direction, and at this point we need a victory to start some momentum going in the right direction. Going over to my football analogy again, I agree that we don’t score on this play. But this play is absolutely one that at a bare minimum will get us the three yards we need, may even get us a first down on this play, and could potentially open up the opposing defense so that the next play is far larger. Because of this, it is absolutely the right play to call at the moment.

The General Assembly needs to pass this bill to allow fairer ballot access in this State. I fully endorse it, and I urge Secretary of State Brian Kemp and all of his potential opponents this November to endorse this proposal as well. I also urge each and every candidate in every statewide race to endorse this bill as a signal to the General Assembly, the Governor, and the Secretary of State that this is absolutely something we are all concerned about. Democratic Party of Georgia State Committee member Andre Walker has already endorsed this bill, as has Jason Pye.