If you have paid any attention to the ballot access battles that non-Demopublican candidates have to go through, you know one reason that candidates like Ralph Nader and Libertarian Michael Badnarik have such a hard time getting their campaigns off the ground. Third party candidates must get as much as tens or even hundreds of thousands of signatures per state just to qualify for the ballot. For some candidates, this requires most of their campaign budgets to be spent just to attempt to get on the ballot. And in spite of such massive attempts, Nader, Badnarik, and others fail to achieve ballot status in many states.
Now Putin is learning from the US! The Kremlin has announced a new crackdown on small parties. Currently, parties must get 100 people to sign up as members in each of half of Russia’s 89 regions. Under the new proposal, parties will be required to sign up 250 members in every single region, and 500 members in each of half the regions. In addition, they will be required to sign up 50,000 members nationwide.
This is another of Putin’s new anti-democratic moves, following his moves to make governors and judges appointed instead of elected.
The world has always learned from America’s example. These days we are not setting a very good one.