Getting on the Ballot in a Democrat Campaign Election
The nominating petition system if you want to run in a Democrat campaign for office is, unfortunately, subject to a lot of abuse (or for any political party, for that matter). Reasonable regulations are adopted to promote democracy and foster efficient elections. It is not unreasonable, for example, to require that a candidate get some voters’ names on his petition. After all, if he can’t get a few signatures, he is not likely to get any votes and it is a waste of taxpayers’ money to have his name on the ballot.
Too often, however, a reasonable regulation in a Democrat campaign is subverted for political purposes. The “Ins” use the law to keep the “Outs” out. In one state, a Democrat or Republican can get on the ballot with 50 signatures on the nominating petition, but a third-party candidate or an Independent needs 250.
To get on the ballot for Judge of the Civil Court of Bronx County, New York, one must obtain signatures from 1 percent of the registered voters, but that means that a Republican needs about 1,500 while a Democrat campaign needs to have about 4,000 names.
Even when some of these roadblocks have been removed, the Ins have resorted to hyper-technical applications of the law to disqualify Democrat campaign candidate petitions. In one case, a candidate had 50 names, just exactly the minimum number of signatures required, but state law allowed a signer to withdraw his name from a petition even after it had been filed. The opposition got one of the signers to withdraw his name, and the candidate’s petitions were declared invalid because he had only forty-nine names, one short.
Visit Killer Campaigning to learn more about how to run a Democrat campaign.