In the November election, Republican and Democratic candidates for New York governor will face no opposition on the ballot from any third party candidates. The reason is not that nobody desires to run as a third party candidate. Instead, third party candidates were unable to meet the state government’s newly-imposed increased number of signatures required on ballot access petitions.
Tag: ballot access
The United States Green Party issued a press release Thursday announcing it is seeking “to get ballot lines for all 50 states and DC and the U.S. territories in 2020.” This would be an improvement over the 2016 US general election. The press release states that the party had ballot access in 47 states then, with access in three of those states just for write-in votes.
Why can’t people just vote for Green Party candidates across the country? The answer is that many state governments have imposed special burdens, including the requirement of gathering many signatures from registered voters and submitting those signatures to the state governments, in order for third parties and their candidates to be included as options in voting booths.