TWO-PARTY MONOPOLY

...Although they also canvassed returns for Commoner and Clark, they generally considered Citizens' Party and Libertarian votes too inconsequential to mention...

...Although state election officials have proved themselves reasonably competent guardians of the bipartisan ballot monopoly in the past, the Democratic Party was unwilling to place this responsibility entirely in local hands in 1980...

...This may be tough, practical politics, but it is a sad commentary on the times when the President of the "world's greatest democracy" attempts to win re-election by driving a rival candidate from the ballot...

...Then, money is what makes the wheels of a campaign turn...

...Over the past two decades, many of the barriers to participation in the political process have been removed...

...The biases in the process would be obvious were the discrimination reversed...

...They shook hands on street corners and at factory gates...

...It took more than a month to complete the official tally of third-party returns...

...And what if Barry Commoner and Ed Clark had been given $29 million, daily television exposure, and the respect they deserved as competent and capable candidates...

...How would his march to the White House have suffered if his name had passed Walter Cronkite's lips only once during a year-long campaign...

...There is another fundamental disparity in this statute...

...They depend upon the news media to see for them...

...But when they presented the state with a list of Libertarian nominees, the election officials informed them that to be a candidate of a party one must have been a registered member of that party for more than six months prior to the election, or, in other words, two months before the Libertarian Party legally existed in the state...

...Even Reagan's old co-star Bonzo got a couple of minutes...

...Fortunately, three levels of Louisiana courts supported the Libertarian position...

...Poor people, blacks, His-panics, eighteen-year-olds have been added to the electorate...

...Since this normally took only a few seconds of air time, the remainder of the ten minutes was filled with features...

...Backed by the news media, the Democratic and Republican parties have used the powers of incumbency to fix the two-party system in institutional concrete...

...More than $105 million was given in 1980 to finance the national campaigns of the Democratic and Republican parties...

...Suppose that out of a hypothetical 100 million popular votes cast, the Republican candidate received 50.1 million votes, the Democrat 25 million, and the Socialist Party candidate 24.9 million votes...

...Without 5 per cent of the vote, a third party gets no money...

...Yet with each election it becomes more difficult for a new party to challenge them, because the major parties have responded to the collapse of their support by legislating props to hold themselves in office...

...This included matching funds for the primary campaigns, $4.4 million each for the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and $29.4 million each for Carter and Reagan to conduct their fall campaigns...

...At a time when the American people most need a responsible party system—and a responsive political process—they find themselves with major parties whose vision of the future extends no farther than a party on election night...

...Viewers learned what the candidate had for lunch, how the wives and families of the candidates were holding up under the rigors of the campaign, Amy Carter's views on Salt II...

...Republican-turned-independent John Anderson also won access in every state and the District of Columbia...

...California requires the most signatures to get on the ballot...

...For the first time since 1888, the Socialist Labor Party did not offer a Presidential candidate...

...Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.2 million signatures would be needed to place the candidate of a new party on the ballots of all fifty states...

...The campaign does not take place on the street corner or at the factory gate...

...The newscasters abuse their position of trust when they decide for the American people which candidates are worthy of consideration and which are not...

...In 1972, the Libertarians qualified only in Colorado and Washington...

...They have generously appropriated public money to cover their own campaign costs while denying such assistance to their opponents...

...The incumbent parties do not provide a useful service to the American people when they screen out competitors and deny the electorate a full range of alternatives...

...They are subject to the same contribution and expenditure limitations, record-keeping and reporting requirements, and auditing procedures as the major parties...

...They have enacted election laws which guarantee it...

...The entire process must be repeated each election year...

...The subsidy for the Socialists, however, would not be the $29.3 million they would appear to have earned...

...It would appear that the post-election check to the Socialists should be only a fraction less than the pre-election check to the Democrats—but that would not be the case...

...The failure to count and report the returns of third parties on election night was the final indignity of a process that had been hostile from the beginning...

...The most significant of these institutional safeguards is the Democratic and Republican control of the ballot...

...Conditions today are also conducive to a new political realignment...

...If the outcome of the election would have been altered even a little by these shifts of resources, then it must be conceded that the process prejudices the decision...

...America lost by not hearing what they had to say...

...New York requires only 20,000 signatures, but the ".ignatures must have been collected from at least twenty Congressional districts...

...The third-party candidates were the ones who talked of the serious issues...

...If voters wish to create new, more responsive parties to represent them, it should not be the function of the political process to deny them the opportunity...

...Most West Virginians were surprised to learn their state even had magisterial districts...

...The inadequacies of the major parties led to the founding of a new party which quickly eclipsed the Whigs and, in its second Presidential contest, elected Abraham Lincoln...

...Citizens' candidates Barry Commoner and LaDonna Harris qualified for a column on thirty ballots, including all of the large industrial states but Texas...

...Even after committing the time and money to the task, a new party is never certain that state officials will certify its petitions as valid...

...They delivered speeches on the campus, at business luncheons, senior citizens' homes, voter forums...

...On the Left, David McReynolds of the Socialist Party was listed on the ballots of ten states...

...The Democratic and Republican candidates would each receive the same amount—$29.4 million under the 1980 plan—despite the fact that in this hypothetical race the Republican out-polled the Democrat by a 2-to-l margin...

...A new party could have qualified for a place on the 1980 general election ballot in that state by submitting a petition containing the signatures of 713,000 registered voters before January 20...

...But the underside of public financing has no sparkle...

...Oklahoma deserves credit for its ingenuity in constructing the finest Catch-22 process of the 1980 ballot drive...

...While the Democratic and Republican candidates are free to spend their money and energies running for office, new parties and independents must commit enormous proportions of their scarce resources running for the right to run...

...In 1980, close to a majority of the eligible voters expressed their faith in the American two-party system by staying home on election day...

...Once before in American history, the major parties lost both their sense of direction and their constituencies...

...Therefore, the Socialist Party would get a subsidy two-thirds as large as the major party subsidy, or $19.4 million compared to $29.4 million for the "major" candidate who finished only one-tenth of a percentage point ahead...

...But given the way the system dealt with Commoner and Clark—or even with Anderson—it seems questionable that the American voters of the 1980s will be permitted the option open to their forebears of the 1850s...

...in 1980 they qualified for all fifty-one ballots...

...Since a proficient petitioner can average around twenty signatures an hour, the task of qualifying for the ballot nationwide would consume more than 100,000 hours of labor...

...A petition which contained the names of voters who lived in different districts would not be accepted...

...the new party must take each petition to the township where the signer resides and have it certified by the town clerk...

...Seen from this vantage point, it was a shining reform...

...The Communist Party ticket of Gus Hall and Angela Davis went before voters in twenty-five states, while Andre'w Young Pulley of the Socialist Workers Party or his stand-in (Pulley is six years too young to be President) won access in twenty-nine...

...The Libertarians also demonstrated an ability to organize...

...This the Libertarians did...

...Most Americans never see a Presidential candidate...

...The Democratic National Committee, at the urging of the White House, budgeted $225,000 to search election statutes for technicalities that could be used to keep John Anderson off the ballot...

...Maps were not available...

...On the Right, the American Independent Party and the American Party—divided remnants of George Wallace's 1968 campaign— made the ballots of eight and seven states, respectively...

...There is only one feature of the Federal Election Campaign Act that holds out any promise for minor parties...

...Third-party candidates were the ones who discussed issues...

...The three most successful ventures outside the major parties in 1980 were the National Unity Campaign of John Anderson, the Libertarian Party ticket of Ed Clark and David Koch, and the Citizens' Party's effort...

...It was thus possible to found a party, but having done so it was not possible for the party to run candidates...

...At least a quarter million people voted for Commoner...

...the speeches given by the candidate to appreciative crowds are not the campaign, they are merely the props and set...

...Seven thousand signatures were required and the petition had to contain a warning that every signer forfeited all rights to vote in the upcoming primaries...

...Had they not taken care to exempt themselves, it is doubtful that even the Democratic and Republican parties could qualify for a plSce on the ballot under the laws they have written...

...For the privilege of appearing on the Florida ballot, a new party must pay the state of Florida a dime for each signature it submits...

...The law is set up so that even if a minor party is eligible for retroactive funding, it can never receive an equitable share of the public financing...

...In New Hampshire, a separate petition is required for each signature...

...Poll taxes, oppressive registration and residency requirements, literacy tests have been abolished...

...Could Reagan have polled forty-three million votes without the almost $40 million in Federal subsidies for his primary, convention, and general election campaigns...

...without money, a third party cannot get 5 per cent of the vote...

...A Federal Election Commission composed of three Democrats and three Republicans sees to that...

...Louisiana officials arbitrarily ruled they would only recognize the other...

...The political process should be neutral...

...There are a mere 224 townships scattered around the state...

...Oklahoma laws provided that a new party could be created by the filing of 38,871 signatures of supporters by July 1,1980...

...Only through heavy campaign spending could an independent or new-party candidate hope to close the gap and compete on an even basis with the Democratic and Republican candidates...

...New parties and independents there were required to ante up a $2,000 non-refundable fee just for the privilege of taking a chance at the ballot requirements...

...The major parties have become minor...

...Commoner's seven-month campaign was awarded less than three minutes of coverage on the network evening news...

...The campaign takes place in voters' living rooms...

...The average of the major party vote in this case is 37.55 million ballots...

...The best way to assure a Carter victory, therefore, was to eliminate Anderson as a candidate in as many states as possible...

...Deirdre Griswold of the new Workers World Party qualified in twelve...

...They have also constructed a maze of fifty-one separate ballot-access laws to frustrate potential rivals...

...Two-party monopoly Democrats and Republicans pass go, collect millions JimMcCIellan Throughout election night, supporters of Barry Commoner and Ed Clark watched returns come in for Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and John Anderson...

...But on election day, millions of voters walked into the voting booth and saw the names of a half dozen Presidential candidates for the first time...

...West Virginia is also worthy of special recognition under the impossible-law category...

...Success in the ballot access drive merely placed the third party at the starting line for a Presidential race— long after the major candidates are headed down the track...

...It is the duty of the voters alone to pass judgment...

...Overwhelmed by having to report such substantive news developments, the networks never had time to report on the campaigns of the third-party candidates...

...Has America grown so large and insensitive that it listens only for the voices of the millions...

...These may not sound like many votes in relative terms, but in absolute numbers they are too large to have been so universally ignored...

...These efforts would not have been possible without strong organization and the intervention of the courts to strike down some of the more repressive laws...

...If the media coverage is less detailed, less serious, less respectful than that bestowed on the major parties, the new party will have credibility problems...

...The ultimate tragedy is that in all but a handful of states, the labors of 1980 qualified these parties for one election only...

...The catch was that a separate petition had to be used for every magisterial district in the state...

...There were ten serious efforts to win access to the ballot in 1980...

...The Democratic and Republican parties have solved their money problems...

...A new party must face onerous petition requirements, filing dates far in advance of election day, limitations on when and where petitions may be circulated, ambiguous and ever-changing statutes, and hostile election officials with an unlimited supply of loopholes and exceptions...

...The Citizens' Party submitted one-and-a-half times the required number of signatures in Rhode Island, but when the state concluded its certification process, the Citizens' Party came up forty-seven signatures short of a place on the ballot...

...The Whigs and Democrats could not provide voters an effective means to manage the problems of westward expansion, sectional rivalry, economic development, and slavery...

...No one—including, apparently, West Virginia election officials—had any idea where these districts were...

...In fact, given the intensity of their campaigns, Clark and Commoner probably spoke directly to more voters than Reagan or Carter...

...Even though third parties are exempted from the economic benefits of the Federal Election Campaign Act, they nevertheless are required to observe all of its restraints and obligations...

...The air waves are oil limits to candidates of minor parties Every night of the campaign the network news brought Carter, Reagan, and Anderson into the homes of American voters...

...All three television networks signed off in the early-morning hours without acknowledging that any votes had been cast for Commoner and his Citizens' Party or Clark and his Libertarians...

...More than 900,000 voted for Clark...

...The election system is set up so you cannot have a campaign without money," Bill Zimmerman, the campaign manager of the Citizens' Party, noted in a retrospective comment on the Commoner effort...

...Public funding of major-party Presidential campaigns was introduced in 1976 so that the American people could buy back the White House from special interest groups...

...Louisiana's election code lays out two distinctly separate routes to ballot access: The Libertarians followed one...

...Out of each thirty-minute program, ten were devoted to coverage of the major-party candidates...

...A worker for the Citizens' Party called this the "If-you-can-swim-to-shore-we'll-hand-you-a-life-preserver" philosophy of campaign financing...

...The 24.9 million votes for the Socialists is 66 per cent of this major party average...

...Benjamin Bubar of the National Statesman Party was on the ballot in nine...

...Taken alone, these requirements were burdensome but not impossible...

...But while the electorate has been expanding, voter options have been contracting...

...We had a program, a candidate, and a national organization, but we didn't have a campaign...

...Commoner, Clark, Griswold, McReynolds, and the others did all the things candidates are supposed to do...

...Chris Hocker of the Libertarian Party noted that "if you took all the news coverage for Clark from the whole campaign, you could count it in minutes...

...The number of Americans who decline to be identified with either Republicans or Democrats has climbed to 40 per cent of the electorate...

...Third-party candidates received no public financing...

...Closely linked to the problems of ballot access and campaign funding is the virtual blackout of third-party candidates by the communications media...

...In Texas, each signer must be a registered voter who did not cast a ballot in the preceding Presidential primary and who can recall an eight-digit voter identification number...

...The news media collected returns for Carter, Reagan, and Anderson in a matter of hours...

...The "equal time" and "fairness" doctrines offer no effective remedy: Extensive exposure of Democratic and Republican candidates on newscasts, documentaries, and news interviews are exempted from equal-time requirements...

...Not since Eugene V. Debs's first effort at the turn of the century has a new party, organizing wholly outside the Democratic and Republican parties, achieved ballot status in so many states...

...If, in one of the 115 foreign countries monitored by the State Department for political rights violations, the incumbent parties took millions from the government treasury for their own campaigns and gave not a dime to their opponents, it would not be classified as reform...

...major party use only—protect and perpetuate the dominant parties...

...Early in his campaign, a reporter asked Barry Commoner, "Are you a serious candidate or are you just running on the issues...

...If a minor party can somehow manage to poll 5 per cent or more of the popular vote, it may qualify for a limited postelection reimbursement for its campaign expenses...

...Instead, the Socialist Party subsidy would bear the same ratio to the $29.4 million major party grant as the Socialist share of the popular vote bears to the average major party vote...

...First, the newscasters presented all the hard** news from the campaign trail...

...Now, the networks had made the more than one million Americans who voted for them as invisible as the eighty million who did not vote at all...

...They talked directly to thousands of people...

...The great irony of 1980 was that the issues and problems of America were never addressed by the Federally subsidized, mass media-delivered campaigns of the major parties...

...This Democrat- and Republican-inspired law guaranteelTthat the major parties will always receive equal payments from the Treasury...

...It should be the role of the process to see that all candidates are accorded fair and equal treatment...

...A wide variety of biases written into the electoral system—from bipartisan election commissioners to postal subsidies for Jim McClellan is an assistant professor of history at the Alexandria campus of Northern Virginia Community College...

...During the 1980 campaign, Commoner and Clark had been ignored by the news media...

...They offered a string of Presidents—Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan—who were only a little less memorable than Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan...

...The major parties have an automatic column on the general election ballots of all fifty states and the District of Columbia...

...A political process where public funds are provided for some candidates and withheld from others is inherently unfair...

...Like Carter and Reagan, they issued position papers and daily press releases...

...Anyone who knew the candidates was interviewed...

...Sixty per cent of the American people rely upon television as their major source of news...

...The Libertarians could have carried North Carolina...

...The DNC feared that if the voters were allowed to choose freely between Carter and Anderson, too many would pick Anderson...

...A basic test of democracy is the openness of the political process...

...The courts found this process unduly restrictive...

...Broadcasters in the past have virtually closed the airwaves to candidates who chose to run outside of the major parties...

...If the people who voted for Commoner had been concentrated in a few states instead of dispersed among thirty, the Citizens' Party would have had sufficient strength to carry both Vermont and Delaware with votes left over...

...If the broadcast networks refuse to cover the activities of a new party, the new party does not exist...