If someone wants to run for office, all they have to do is file their name and intent with the local recorder, right?
Wrong.
This story may be true for some local offices, but for statewide elections, the trial to get your name onto the ballot is often far from easy. If you've ever wondered how there could be over 200 organized political parties in the US, but often only Republican and Democrat choices on the ballot, now you know.
Ballot access has been around since the drafters of the constitution implemented the voting process. The original idea behind ballot access was well-intentioned: you don't want to have everybody in the state putting their name on the ballot, ending up with 3,000 choices to sort through. To this end, the states implemented a requirement that any potential candidate must submit, along with their name and intent to run for office, a list of signatures showing that they had support among their peers. The requirements for this list were nominal - perhaps 10-20 signatures, sometimes only 5.
This continued all well and good for several years, until the DNC and the GOP became the big boys. They got together and decided they wanted to stay the big boys. In order to guarantee this, they decided to make it easy for their candidates to get on the ballot, and hard for anyone else. To this end, most states now allow any official party candidate to be automatically placed on the ballot if that party received a certain number of votes in the previous election. However, if your party has not received a required number of votes, you must submit a list of signatures. But the requirements for this list are no longer so easy to fulfill. Many states require that petitioners collect a number of signatures equal to 1% of the state population, and that the signatures can only be collected between certain dates before the deadline to be put on the ballot.
South Carolina is by far the worst state for ballot access. They have the largest signature requirement within the shortest window, and have a maximum rate that may be paid to the petitioners. South Carolina has also taken away the write-in provision present in most other state's ballots.
Next time your considering a candidate, ask them what their position is on ballot access and watch them stutter and stammer before going on to the next question. So far, the only parties willing to address the ballot access issue are the smaller ones.
