[EL] Washington Post story that Rick Hasen linked to (about North Carolina)

[Richard Winger]

This morning Rick Hasen linked to an interesting story in the Washington Post about North Carolina's election law changes in 2013.  The story is useful.  There were a few progressive aspects of North Carolina's famous election law bill and it had been distressing to me that the news stories about the bill didn't mention them.

However, the Washington Post story is seriously misleading about ballot access.  The story has a subtitle, "It'll be cheaper for third parties to get on the ballot."  Actually, the bill made no change to the very severe ballot access laws for newly-qualifying parties and independent candidates.  Statewide independents, and minor parties, need 89,366 valid signatures to get on the 2014 ballot, and the petition is due in May.  This is the second highest mandatory ballot access requirement, for minor parties and independent candidates, of any state.  Only California requires more.  The legislature rejected all bills to lower these requirements.  The House at least passed a bill to study the issue, but the Senate killed that bill also.

The 2013 omnibus election law bill did lower the number of signatures in lieu of a filing fee from 10,000 to 5,000, but that is virtually of no practical significance, because it is still cheaper for a candidate to pay the filing fee than to gather than many signatures.

 
Richard Winger
415-922-9779
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
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