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Republicans pull a fast one on voters

CanadaJohn said:
Two points/questions I'd pose here:

1. Are the signature requirements any more onerous on the third parties than they are on traditional political parties?

2. If a political party has so few followers/members that they can't meet the minimum requirements for being placed on the ballot, what purpose do they serve being on the ballot other than potentially swinging a vote to a candidate the majority of people don't want? If you can't meet the minimum requirements, how the hell do you expect to win an election?
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The problem is: Denying access to more voters. If you can't even get on a platform and try to sell your point of view to the other voters out there that are not members of your party, what use is it to even have third parties? May as well prescribe a 2 party plutocracy. In either case, this is pretty scummy. I have no problem with mocking 3rd party votes, but denying them the right to even get on a ballot is pretty ****ty if they have thousands of members as it is.
 
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wait a minute.

you mean people in power are using their power to prevent them from losing their power.

"that's umpossible"

that's it, I'm now a democrat. they would never do that!

/sarcasm
 
Can anyone provide a link to the bill that was actually passed? The bill referenced in the OP only mentions AZ HB 2305 in which I can find no reference to increased ballot access requirements...
 
Tucker Case said:
I'm of the belief that any time something is legislated for the sole purpose of limiting the peoples' democratic decision-making process, it is unreasonable
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There has to be some limits or else there isn't a democratic process at all.
 
Anagram said:
Perhaps not this election, but being unable to put a candidate on a ballot hinders the chance to get publicity and increase support for subsequent elections where they might eventually have enough to win an election. If you don't have a candidate in the race people are going to pay even less attention to you than they already do to third parties. It turns their very slim chances they have now into almost non-existent.
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Perhaps it would be wiser for people trying to build a viable third party to actually build the party first and field candidates secondly. You need to build the movement before you elect representatives of that movement. If you take the Tea Party, as an example, they didn't field candidates under the Tea Party banner but built their movement to the point where they could affect the outcome of some Republican primaries. They may be at a point where they could establish themselves as a political party and field candidates but for now they seem to be satisfied with trying to bring candidates in at least one of the two main parties more in line with their views of government - that's probably a wise strategy. The Green Party here in Canada did much the same kind of thing as they built up support before they formalized themselves as a political party - even with the broad amount of publicity they've received, they've only elected one member of parliament to date - that's how hard it is. So fielding candidates is not necessarily the right way to go if you want to shake up the system.
 
AlabamaPaul said:
Can anyone provide a link to the bill that was actually passed? The bill referenced in the OP only mentions AZ HB 2305 in which I can find no reference to increased ballot access requirements...
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Good afternoon V1.1 - hope you're well.

I don't have a link to the bill, but I understand the bill changes the ballot access requirements from a percentage of a party's membership to a percentage of the voting public at large. In this case, in order to field a candidate on a statewide ballot, the party has to secure the signatures of one sixth of one percent of the electorate which works out to just over 5,300 signatures.
 
CanadaJohn said:
Good afternoon V1.1 - hope you're well.

I don't have a link to the bill, but I understand the bill changes the ballot access requirements from a percentage of a party's membership to a percentage of the voting public at large. In this case, in order to field a candidate on a statewide ballot, the party has to secure the signatures of one sixth of one percent of the electorate which works out to just over 5,300 signatures.
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Hi there jcj. I trust all is well up north...

I did a quick search for AZ HB 2305, but it contained nothing relating to ballot access. I hoped the OP could provide a link to the actual bill...
 
Republicans: Libertarians can't compete

*passes law to eliminate Libertarian competition*

:cool:
 
CanadaJohn said:
Perhaps it would be wiser for people trying to build a viable third party to actually build the party first and field candidates secondly. You need to build the movement before you elect representatives of that movement. If you take the Tea Party, as an example, they didn't field candidates under the Tea Party banner but built their movement to the point where they could affect the outcome of some Republican primaries. They may be at a point where they could establish themselves as a political party and field candidates but for now they seem to be satisfied with trying to bring candidates in at least one of the two main parties more in line with their views of government - that's probably a wise strategy. The Green Party here in Canada did much the same kind of thing as they built up support before they formalized themselves as a political party - even with the broad amount of publicity they've received, they've only elected one member of parliament to date - that's how hard it is. So fielding candidates is not necessarily the right way to go if you want to shake up the system.
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It's easier to do that when you've got candidates, highly visible people who the media is forced to cover and can represent their party. Spokespeople that people can look at as representatives in their party. Perhaps even get into debates with other candidates. The Tea Party movement was different. I agree with Gallup's Frank Newport when he says that it wasn't really a new movement, but "simply a re-branding of traditional Republican candidates and policies." They expressed dissatisfaction with the mainstream Republican leaders, but overall it was really just a movement within the Republican party and they mostly endorsed Republican candidates.

A new political party would be harder to do that way in my opinion. At the very least it would be easier if they tried to build up the party that way and fielded candidates than if they just tried to build it up. It would be hard for any party to show progress and keep the public's attention if they had to be a competitive party before they could even start to field candidates.
 
CanadaJohn said:
Good afternoon V1.1 - hope you're well.

I don't have a link to the bill, but I understand the bill changes the ballot access requirements from a percentage of a party's membership to a percentage of the voting public at large. In this case, in order to field a candidate on a statewide ballot, the party has to secure the signatures of one sixth of one percent of the electorate which works out to just over 5,300 signatures.
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I don't see how that isn't reasonable...
 
AlabamaPaul said:
It worked that time, and I can see the issue. I think ballot access should be allowed based on registered voters, not party voters...
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But only the party voters are allowed to sign the petition. Despite the fact the Libertarian candidate got over 100,000 votes in last years senate election, only about 25,000 people are eligible to sign the ticket. The libertarian party obviously has a fairly good swath of support in Arizona, but they would be very unlikely to be able to get the one out of every 5 party members necessary to sign the petition to get ballot access. Luckily, as the link says, it is very possible this law will be struck down.
 
Anagram said:
But only the party voters are allowed to sign the petition. Despite the fact the Libertarian candidate got over 100,000 votes in last years senate election, only about 25,000 people are eligible to sign the ticket. The libertarian party obviously has a fairly good swath of support in Arizona, but they would be very unlikely to be able to get the one out of every 5 party members necessary to sign the petition to get ballot access. Luckily, as the link says, it is very possible this law will be struck down.
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Why would it be very unlikely? Are you suggesting that libertarians are lazy voters, generally not interested or easily distracted, fair weather participants? I'd be inclined to think that they would be more active, more interested, and all weather participants - that's why they went out of their way to become members of the Libertarian Party.
 
Anagram said:
But only the party voters are allowed to sign the petition. Despite the fact the Libertarian candidate got over 100,000 votes in last years senate election, only about 25,000 people are eligible to sign the ticket. The libertarian party obviously has a fairly good swath of support in Arizona, but they would be very unlikely to be able to get the one out of every 5 party members necessary to sign the petition to get ballot access. Luckily, as the link says, it is very possible this law will be struck down.
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I think we're agreeing, but the sticking point comes when deciding primary candidates...
 
This sort of thing I believe Arizonans should oppose. But laying it solely at the feet of republicans isn't quite accurate. Current political makeup of the AZ legislature:

Senate: 17 Republicans, 13 Democrats
House of Representatives: 36 Republicans, 24 Democrats
 
CanadaJohn said:
Why would it be very unlikely? Are you suggesting that libertarians are lazy voters, generally not interested or easily distracted, fair weather participants? I'd be inclined to think that they would be more active, more interested, and all weather participants - that's why they went out of their way to become members of the Libertarian Party.
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Not more than any other party. It is just really hard to get more than 20% of your statewide members to sign a petition, especially when you need to have a good deal more than that, because many will be invalidated. Rick Santorum needed just 4,500 Republican signatures to get on the Indiana ballot last year, of which there are more than a million members, and was unable to do so.
 
azgreg said:
I fully believe Gary Johnson was a far better choice than Obama and Romney.
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Not really. Gary Johnson had kooky beliefs as did Romney. Gary Johnson's people also swindled money from his campaign to their own companies. This also happens with the Ron Paul campaign. I mean if these people cannot even pick good campaign managers I shudder at the thought of what they would do to this country! It would end up worse than Barack Obama's Chicago mob style rule.
 
zgoldsmith23 said:
1. Who brought up Ron Paul? Did I endorse him? No. Quality straw man on your part.

2. Perhaps previously in certain instances, but you're making a blatant generalization.
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1. It's not a straw man, it's an example! I can use Ron Paul as much as I want especially for how often he was thrown in my face whenever I mentioned the word Romney online!
2. Ok, then name me a third party candidate, I'm sure I can find something fraudulent or kooky about them. This is going to be easy :)
 
ModerateGOP said:
Not really. Gary Johnson had kooky beliefs as did Romney. Gary Johnson's people also swindled money from his campaign to their own companies. This also happens with the Ron Paul campaign. I mean if these people cannot even pick good campaign managers I shudder at the thought of what they would do to this country! It would end up worse than Barack Obama's Chicago mob style rule.
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How is any of that any different then the crooks we have now?
 
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