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Demand free elections in the United States? Doesn’t the U.S.A. have free elections already?
No. You might call our elections pseudo-free elections. You almost always can choose between one of two candidates for any given office: a Democratic Party candidate and a Republican Party candidate. But many Americans eligible to vote don’t like those choices. They might want to vote for candidates from the other parties (there are quite a few) or for independent candidates who are not affiliated with any party.
There are two big obstacles to truly free elections in the United States. The first are legal barriers. The second has to do with ownership of the media. Legal barriers, for instance, include impossible standards to get on the ballot. If you are running for a third party or are an outsider running within the Democrats or Republicans, the system is stacked against you. The most widely publicized recent example was the Republican Presidential Primary in the State of New York, where Bob Dole’s opponents were kept of the ballot. But that’s just the most glaring example.
Ask independents and third party candidates in almost any State, and you’ll find they are barred or have to spend most of their financial resources just to get on the ballot, while the Democratic and Republican nominees are automatically put on the ballot. Ross Perot received about 20% of the vote in the 1992 presidential election, largely attributed to his appearance in the nationally televised presidential debates. The Democrats and Republicans simply did not invite him when he was the presidential candidate for the Reform Party in 1996. That is about as corrupt as any phoney third-world election.
There were plenty of other Presidential candidates who might have looked a lot better than either Bob Dole or Bill Clinton had they been allowed to debate and had their campaigns been extensively covered by the media. There were the candidates of the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, Peace and Freedom Party, and probably several others (leave e-mail and I’ll add your party to this list). But that isn’t true in just presidential elections; it starts at the local level. Local independent and third party candidates are not allowed coverage in the media, they are excluded from debates, and often excluded from the ballot altogether.
We need, at minimum, the following reforms:
1. Any candidate for any office should be able to get on the ballot for any office by getting 1000 signatures (in the area to be represented) of people eligible to vote.
2. Any political party recognized by one State should then automatically be recognized by all the states, and have an automatic place on the ballot.
3. Any debate that takes place should include all candidates who have qualified to be on the ballot.
4. Rather than use government regulation of the media, all honest citizens should pledge to boycott any media outlet that does not give equal coverage to all the candidates who will appear on the ballot. How can that be achieved? We’ll need to use a variety of tactics, but despite the vast political differences between the third parties, we need to unite on the one issue of election reform, and appeal to those ordinary Democrats and Republicans who are not part of their corrupt party machinery and would like to see truly free and honest elections and a less corrupt government.
-- William P. Meyers