Web Of State Laws Keeping Demos, Gop Dominant

Floyd Fullen was having a bad day. He’d spent most of it, rain-splattered and wind-blown, wandering the streets in search of petition signatures for a new political party.

He’d gathered only a handful by the time Marie Waybright stopped long enough to listen to his spiel about the Reform Party. No, she wasn’t happy with the Republicans or Democrats. She took a ballpoint pen. Yes, she liked Ross Perot. She clicked the pen nervously.

Fullen opened his tattered red binder. She signed her name.

But in Fullen’s zeal to get her signature, he neglected to tell Waybright one important detail: Now that she’s signed his petition, if she votes in the May 14 West Virginia primary, she could go to jail. For a year. Or be fined $1,000. Or both. And Fullen, because he forgot to tell her, could wind up a few cellblocks away.

West Virginia’s laws are among the harshest - there already has been one arrest this year - but they are hardly unique. They are part of a tangle of arcane rules and 50 erratically different state laws. Together, they make it virtually impossible for any third party to get on the ballot, stay on the ballot or become much of a force in American politics.

While 67 percent of the American people have said in polls that they are ready for a new political party, they are unlikely to get one anytime soon.

The Republicans and Democrats have seen to that.

What began as a way to stifle the Communist Party during the Depression has, in effect, become a rigged game that only Republicans and Democrats get to play. Now, what’s getting stifled are the new ideas that third parties have traditionally forced into the political debate, such as women’s suffrage, shorter working hours and the abolition of slavery and child labor.

“It’s just shocking, the restrictions that they put on people’s rights to participate in a democracy,” said Russ Verney, executive director of Perot’s Reform Party. “State legislatures are made up of Republicans and Democrats. And Republicans and Democrats do not want competition.”

This year, five third parties are attempting to get on the ballots in all 50 states in November. As of early May, the Reform Party was on nine state ballots, trailing both the Libertarians, who are on 30, and Natural Law Party, which is on 17. The Green Party and the U.S. Taxpayers Party are also trying.

Just getting the state laws straight is an ordeal.

It’s tough to run for president as an independent or third party candidate, although lawsuits by George Wallace in 1968 and John Anderson in 1980 have made it easier. Perot ran that way in 1992. But it’s twice as much work to form a true third party, able to run candidates for president and state and local offices.

In Arkansas, to get an independent presidential candidate on the ballot, hold a meeting, you’re done. For a third party, you must gather signatures equal to 3 percent of the vote cast in the last statewide election. And you must gather them in the last four months of an odd year.

Colorado is now one of the easy states. Pay $500. Instant party.

But Alabama’s a different story. After a third party candidate for county council got elected, an angry state legislature tried to quintuple the number of signatures needed for a third party. The governor, who at first vowed to veto the proposal, agreed to triple it.

State lawmakers said the ballot was getting too crowded.

It hasn’t always been this way.

In the 1910s, lawmakers from five different parties served in Congress. And in the 19th century, third parties flourished. New ideas, like women’s suffrage, the direct election of senators and the abolition of slavery, came first from such parties as the Populists, the Prohibitionists and the Republicans.

That’s right, the Republicans were a third party when the Democrats and Whigs held sway. Once voters felt the Whigs were no longer in touch with their concerns, the party disintegrated.

That would be inconceivable today.

Although the Constitution makes no mention of political parties, Americans have become accustomed to the two-party system. Voters tend to think third party candidates are suspect, because they don’t have the money, the credibility or the horde of TV cameras following them around.

“Being for or against the two-party system is like being for or against gravity,” said Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News in San Francisco. For 30 years Winger has followed the frustrating saga of third party politics.

Republicans and Democrats also point to the volatile multiparty coalition governments in Italy or Israel and warn that third parties would only fracture American politics. But, Winger said, that argument ignores one central fact: U.S. elections are winner-take-all. In Europe, if a minor party wins 20 percent of the vote, they get 20 percent of the seats in the legislature. Here, if a minor party wins 20 percent of the vote, they get nothing.

That system, which is outlined in the Constitution, virtually ensures there will only be two dominant parties at any one time.