Moore Advocates Third Party Ballot Access

Submitted by Moore for Georgia

Recent local and national elections have rekindled Angela Moore's long-held convictions regarding equal ballot access. As a strong proponent for true democracy, she views any systemic obstacle to individuals or groups exercising this most basic of American rights as a major threat to our status as a free nation.

Georgia law requires third party candidates for statewide office to obtain signatures from one percent of the state's registered voters to get their names on the ballot. Just recently, the signatures of five percent (22,700) of the registered voters in a candidate's local municipality were required.

Angela stated, "That is a lot of signatures!"

No third party candidate for local election in Georgia has ever been able to overcome the five percent petition requirement. This also holds true in statewide elections in which a one percent signature requirement is imposed upon third party candidates. And the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld this unfair practice in cases that have come before them. Angela cited Mary Norwood and Faye Coffield as examples of the glaring inequities in ballot access laws in this and other states.

Major party candidates do not have similar signature requirements. Nonetheless, they too are plagued by endless rules and regulations, including qualifying fees, filings and on-going reporting requirements in Georgia's political process. Despite these standards, Angela feels that the requirements of the state's two major parties pale in comparison to those of third party hopefuls.

A committed Democrat and a strong advocate for equal representation in government, Angela indicated that many of us are unaware that the Republican Party got its start as the most successful third party in American history, winning numerous congressional races in its first election cycle in 1854 and going on to take the presidency under Abraham Lincoln's leadership.

Angela stated, "As Secretary of State, I will aggressively pursue changes in election laws to allow third party candidates equal access to Georgia's democratic process." "I have held this view since my previous campaign for this office in 2006; this is no eleventh hour stance on my part in regard to this issue. Our ballots should represent the desires of the voting constituency, and to deny any segment of qualified voters the right to cast a vote for a candidate of their choosing is simply undemocratic."

Chief Justice Warren, in rendering the Court's decision in Sweeny vs. New Hampshire (1957), wrote: "All political ideas cannot and should not be channeled into the programs of our two major parties. History has amply proved the virtue of political activity by minority, dissident groups, which innumerable times have been in the vanguard of democratic thought and whose programs were ultimately accepted..."

As maintained by Angela, any substantive change in this biased area of politics in America, and in Georgia in particular, will only come about when a coalition of concerned citizens of all political persuasions come together and work in unison to reform the laws that underpin the often stringent and unfair rules in our election process.