In the congressional elections of 1992, William Kuntz had planned to run as an independent candidate for the United States House of Representatives from the 24th Congressional District of New York. When he wanted to be placed on the ballot, however, he discovered that New York election law required independent candidates to collect 3,500 signatures in 42 days and party candidates to collect 625 signatures in 19 days.
Kuntz found this rule grossly unfair and went to court alleging that New York Election Law violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. To his chagrin, the court told Kuntz that “a state has a legitimate interest in limiting the names printed on a ballot to candidates who have demonstrated some degree of support. There is surely an important state interest in requiring some preliminary showing of a significant modicum of support before printing the name of a political organization's candidate on the ballot.”
The New York court based its reasoning on the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Jenness v. Fortson (403 U.S. 431, 442). It upheld a Georgia statute in which “nonparty candidates could be listed on the ballot only by filing a nominating petition signed by at least five percent of those eligible to vote in the last election for the office in question. The independent candidate had 180 days to gather the required signatures. However, candidates winning a primary of a ‘political party’--defined under the Georgia statute as a political organization receiving twenty percent or more of the vote at either the last gubernatorial or presidential election--would automatically be listed on the ballot.
In a 1968 case, however, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected excessive barriers on new-party candidates. In Williams v. Rhodes (393 U.S. 23), it struck down as unconstitutional an Ohio election law that required petitions signed by 15 percent of the relevant electorate.
Ballot access requirements differ widely from state to state. Third party candidates for the U.S. Senate in Florida, for example, need to gather almost 200,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot, whereas their counterparts in New Jersey need to gather only 800. Most election laws are either specifically designed to limit the prospects for third party and independent candidates or to work to the advantage of the two major parties.
With few exceptions, third party and independent candidates tend to fail in their quest to hold office. Most lose in the general election, a small number lose in competitive primaries, and many fail to get as far as meeting the requirements to get on the ballot and thus are shut out of the competition.
Third party and independent candidates tend to be peripheral players in elections because the cards are stacked to their disadvantage. Yet, they sometimes raise policy issues that the major parties have ignored and provide outlets for voters discontented with the two major parties.
In Federalist No. 10, James Madison decried potential majority tyranny and demanded that all factions have open access to the political system. Yet, as long as most Americans favor the two-party system, third party and independent candidates are unlikely to get equal access to the ballot and are likely to remain handicapped by unfair barriers. |