Arizona Libertarian Appeal Denied

The United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, has refused to take the case of Arizona Libertarian Party v. Hobbs.  The Libertarians were suing to overturn Arizona's ballot access laws.  Arizona has some of the most discriminatory laws for alternative party candidates.in the Untied States.  Arizona uses a combination of laws to keep candidates from parties other than the Republican and Democratic from appearing on the ballot.  There are two laws which especially damage alternative party candidates.  The Arizona Libertarian Party plaintiffs were attempting to challenge one of these these laws. 

The first law states that only the names of the two largest parties will appear on the voter registration form.  That means only the Republican and Democratic Parties have their name on the voter registration form.  There is a checkbox which allows people to select one of those two parties.  People can register as members of a different party, but must follow a procedure that is not made clear on the form of writing the name of that party on a separate line.  This makes it very rare that people register as members of alternative parties, which has swelled the number of independents in Arizona.

The second law states that in order to get on the ballot to be in a primary, a person needs to get a prescribed number of signatures.  The barrier is that those signatures must be either members of your party or independents.  According to the Arizona Secretary of State, there are about 1,330,000 Republicans, 1,186,000 Democrats and 32,300 Libertarians registered.  As far as signatures, a Republican candidate has to get the signatures of about 6400 Republicans, a Democratic Party candidate about 6000 signatures of Democrats and a Libertarian candidate about 3200 Libertarian signatures to be on the ballot.

What do you think is easier, to get 6400 of 1.3 million people to sign a petition or 3200 of 32,000?  According to the case records, Libertarian Party candidates had to get the signatures of between 11% and 30% of all registered Libertarians in a given area to qualify to run for office.  That compares to a Republican candidate needing the signatures of less than 1/2 of 1% of registered Republicans.  The Court appears to put the burden on Libertarian Party candidates to go after independent voters.  Of course, there is nothing to stop Republican or Democratic Party candidates from going after that population also.  This makes the advantage for Republican and Democratic Party candidates even greater.  It is this disparity in percentage of signatures needed which the Libertarian Party was attempting to challenge.    

A Conscious Conservative believes that the Republican and Democratic Parties should be held accountable for rigging elections in this manner.  While they complain about foreign meddling and voter suppression, they fail to acknowledge that they have created a corrupt system.  The results of this system is that nearly 1/2 of voters to not vote in a given election.  It is no wonder.  Nearly one half of all seats only have one candidate due to ballot restrictions.  Why bother to vote when the result is already determined?