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So, you want a third party?
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Last week during a speech at a Missouri college, Newt Gingrich said that conservative Republicans may break away and form a third party:
[Gingrich] predicted the rise of a third party by 2012 if Republicans don't get their act together. And he acknowledged that most of the big financial problems the country currently faces began under the era of former President Bush.
"Remember, everything Obama's doing, Bush started last year. If you're going to talk about big spending, the mistakes of the Bush administration last year are fully as bad as the mistakes of Obama's first two, three months," he said.
And, remember, everything Bush did, Gingrich supported...but that's a story I've already touched on.
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It's something you hear more and more these days. Americans are fed up with the two major parties and are looking for somewhere else to go, but are skeptical of the current third party landscape.
Arguments against expanding ballot access are prevelent, ranging from the "spoiler effect" to the arrogant. However, it seems clear that Americans, as polls regularly show, want more choices at the ballot box. Even taking it a step further during the 2008 election, Zogby released a poll showing that 55 percent of likely voters wanted Bob Barr, the Libertaran Party nominee for president, in the presidential debates.
For those of you who don't know, if you're planning to run as a third party candidate, you cannot walk to your local registar anywhere and Georgia and file for local, state or national office without obtaining the necessary signatures to get on the ballot (non-partisan races excluded).
Georgia has some of the most restrictive ballot access laws in the United States. According to Ballot Access News, the laws were passed in 1943 to keep the Communist Party off the ballot.
According to Georgia Code (§ 21-2-170), in order to get on the ballot a candidate must turn in petitions equaling 5 percent of the registered voters from the district he plans to run in. If a candidate plans to run statewide, he must get signatures from 1 percent of total registered voters in the state. It's something most people aren't even aware of and when asked to sign many react by saying, "This is America, you shouldn't have to do this."
The 1 percent rule also applies to parties attempting to get their candidates name on the ballot, and if they do get a line on the .jpg)
ballot, they are still not a "party" as defined by Georgia law, they are a "political body" and they receive 2 percent of the popular vote in any statewide race to maintain that status. In order to receive an automatic ballot line for all candidate and party status, a candidate for governor or president must receive 20 percent of the popular vote in a general election.
The Libertarian Party is the only third party that has been able to obtain political body status in Georgia. The Constitution Party and Green Party and have little to no presence in the state.
If you're running statewide, you'll need roughly 53,000 signatures (going by figures from 11/08). If you're running for Congress, and I'll use the Third Congressional District for this example, you'll need roughly 24,000 signatures. Keep in mind that each of these signatures must be validated by the Georgia Secretary of State's office, so you need a buffer of several thousand signatures, just in case they toss out signatures.
It's quite a tedious task, which is why you don't see anyone running for Congress as a third party candidate in Georgia. In fact, no third party or independent candidate has run for Congress in Georgia since 1964 (excluding special elections). It's also why only well-funded (Ross Perot) or well-known (Pat Buchanan) independent candidates have been able to qualify for president in our state. But don't look to the Georgia General Assembly for help, despite other states relaxing ballot requirements, leaders of both parties have shown no interest in ballot access reform. Both Republicans and Democrats have a vested interest in preserving the status quo.
Will there be a third party movement like Gingrich predicts? It's hard to say, but it's not as cut-and-dry as Gingrich makes it sound. As already pointed out, there are tremendous hurdles to getting a third party off the ground. Basically, a lot has to happen and I'm not convinced that the Republican Party is finished or incapable of reforming itself, though it is in trouble, but GOP's problems are a subject for another post at another time.
