Democrats and Republicans agree on something: no outside competition

There will be at least two candidates on Pennsylvania’s presidential ballot in November, that much we know for sure. Things may change, but right now that looks increasingly certain to mean a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Plenty of Pennsylvanians would be interested in a third (or fourth or fifth) option. So why do our state laws do everything possible to prevent that?

The answer is that any group in power will work to create a system that helps them stay in power. Democrats and Republicans may not agree on much in Harrisburg, but they agree that they should be the only game in town.

They’ve been mostly successful at keeping it that way.

In the state House races in 2022, less than 1% of the vote went to candidates outside the two major parties. It was the same in the previous election and in most recent elections. The total third-party vote for governor and U.S. senator in 2020 was higher, thanks to some unpopular Republican nominees, but still less than 2.5%.

For president in 2020, only 1.15% of people cast a ballot for anyone besides Trump and Biden — with all 79,380 of those votes going to the Libertarian Party candidate, Jo Jorgensen.

» READ MORE: Why efforts to keep Trump off primary ballots defy every principle of democracy | Kyle Sammin

Some of this is bound to be the result of voter preference: Most people probably would vote for one of the two mainstream parties on most occasions. But that assumption is hard to test when third parties struggle to get on the ballot. And recent polling on the 2024 race suggests that voters aren’t crazy about either of these presumptive nominees: Biden’s approval rating sits around 40%, according to the latest PBS/Marist poll; Trump’s is just as bad.

There are several other candidates already in the race. Professor Cornel West and environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are the most prominent, but others are also launching their quixotic bids. (Kanye West is officially out, surely a disappointment to his remaining fans.)

The centrist group No Labels had hoped to run with West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin at the top of its ticket until he announced this month that he was not entering the race. It is currently searching for a contender.

If it finds one, it will have a tough time getting him or her on the ballot, largely due to the efforts of the two main political parties. Conservative political analyst Michael Barone once wrote that “all process arguments are insincere, including this one.” This is nowhere more evident than in the court challenges to third-party candidates.

In a case currently working its way through the courts, Democrats are arguing that undated mail-in ballots should be accepted, even though state law requires a date. A federal judge agreed with them, calling it a “trivial paperwork error” that should not stand in the way of counting votes.

Contrast that with the arguments from Democrats in 2020 who sued to keep Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins off the presidential ballot. The reason? A required affidavit was faxed, not delivered on paper with a notary’s seal. A correct version was delivered to the Pennsylvania Department of State several days later, but that was past the deadline, and the state Supreme Court held that the paperwork error was enough to doom the Green Party’s slate. All five Democrats on the court joined that opinion, which happened to benefit their party’s nominee.

Republicans joined the Green Party in opposing the Democrats’ suppression efforts, but they’re not consistent on the point, either. In the city elections last year, Republicans were the ones arguing for strict interpretation of the election code when they sought to exclude Working Families Party candidates from the ballot for City Council at large. The reason in that case was that the candidates submitted financial statements that they signed electronically, not with a pen or pencil as the law requires. The courts allowed the candidates to amend their paperwork after the deadline.

Inconsistent? Definitely. But that’s what happens when we have laws that restrict ballot access and well-funded political parties willing to jump on every uncrossed T and undotted I.

Whenever the government has power over something, it can become a lever for those in office to help their friends and hinder their enemies. We could make our elections a lot more democratic by removing this one lever from the hands of the major parties.

» READ MORE: Let’s stay together, America | Kyle Sammin

There must be some method of determining who qualifies for the ballot, but expensive signature-gathering operations and arcane paperwork requirements aren’t our only options. In Great Britain, for example, anyone can run for a seat in Parliament with 10 signatures of voters in the district, plus a 500 pound deposit (about $630). If you get more than 5% of the vote, you get the 500 pounds back — it’s just there to discourage fringe candidates. (Pennsylvania charges a nonrefundable $200 filing fee for statewide candidates, so this is not that different.) Maybe more than 10 signatures should be required for a statewide race, but it shouldn’t be too much higher.

In France, they use a different method: Candidates for president must collect the signatures of 500 public officeholders as proof of their widespread support. That exact system could not work here — our ballot requirements are state-based, not federal, so 500 in each state might be onerous. But, say, 50 signatures of mayors, county commissioners, or state legislators to make it on to the Pennsylvania ballot? That seems reasonable. They could even retain the existing requirement of 5,000 voter signatures as an alternative method for outsider candidates, in keeping with our country’s antiestablishment tradition.

The point is: Incumbents will always try to stay in power. They will crow about “democracy” when it suits them, and then suppress opposition candidates and tell us that their worn-out standard-bearers are the only choices allowed.

To give the people a real choice, we should clear these obstacles and open the ballot to more than just the same old duopoly.