Re: Lindsey Drath on Expanding the Two-Party Political System

On 2025-07-21 10:43 PM, The Horny Goat wrote:

On Mon, 21 Jul 2025 20:01:05 -0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman"
<ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
 

Here's a segment from C-SPAN Washington Journal from 7/21/2025.
>
Lindsey Drath on Expanding the Two-Party Political System
https://www.c-span.org/program/washington-journal/lindsey-drath-on-expanding-the-two-party-political-system/662767
>
She speaks well and really appeals to me. Someone else listen and tell
me what she gets wrong.
>
She's promoting ballot access for the Forward Party. Andrew Yang put
cash into this but I think they've moved beyond his influence.

 By "promoting ballot access" do you mean "having their candidates'
name on the ballot"?
 Because no question that CAN be abused - Canadian Conservative party
leader Pierre Poilevre could speak to that - voters in his district in
the April 2025 election were handed a ballot with 100+ names on it and
this was considered THE primary element in his defeat. He is now
facing a by-election and again the same types have managed to get 50+
candidates on the ballot.
 When my grandfather was twice a federal candidate in the 1960s and
each time his party had to put up a deposit (refundable if he got a
certain %age of the winner's vote count). Back in the 60s the deposit
was $50 - now it's $250. Meaning that putting up 100 candidates costs
at most $25000 if no other attempt to campaign is made. That was a
serious deposit back in the 60s - far less so now. That's chicken feed
for federal candidates - at least serious federal candidates.
 

I'm sure I heard recently that (Justin) Trudeau dropped the deposit requirement for candidates entirely shortly after first getting elected in 2015. Was I misinformed?

Does the US have such a system for candidates - and if so what are the
required deposits?

--
Rhino