Not Invited to the Party
by James T. Bennett
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Review by Jordon M. Greene (March 11, 2010)

As irritating as it may be to admit, Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president of Iran, was right when in 2005 he said "There is only a veneer of democracy in the United States…" How is this true you ask? "Election laws are so complicated in your county that people have no choice but to vote for one of the candidates who are with one of the two parties," Rafsanjani said.

James T. Bennett, Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy at George Mason University, explains America's problem in his most recent book Not Invited to the Party, aptly subtitled How the Demopublicans Have Rigged the System and Left Independents Out in the Cold. Bennett covers many issues in Not Invited to the Party but focuses most heavily on two. One, campaign finance reform, which is discussed often by electoral reform groups. The second, ballot access reform, rarely sees the light of day in the media and meets major opposition in a likely place, the state legislature.

In Bennett's skillful and often comical manner, he lays out the history of the ballot in the United States, from the days when political parties printed and distributed their own ballots to our current system adopted during the Progressive Era of the state-regulated or printed ballot enforced by ballot access laws. Bennett explains how ballot laws where started as a way to determine who the State should put on the ballot, and quickly -- nearly instantly -- became a method to freeze the status quo by ridding the two major parties of opposition.

He notes Richard Winger's observation that, in states with restrictive ballot access laws, minor parties do not often win elections, but in states where ballot access laws are less restrictive minor parties do win elections. However, as Bennett conveys over the course of Not Invited to the Party, what major party politician wants to lower the chances of re-election by opening up the ballot to more choices when all they must do is restrict choice, freeze the status quo and remain in office? All, of course, at the expense of free choice and an individual's freedom of political expression at the ballot box.

Bennett also covers an important aspect of campaign finance reform, so-called "Voter-Owned Elections," otherwise referred to as Taxpayer-Funded Elections or "welfare for politicians." He shows how the use of public money to supposedly cleanse political campaigns of corrupt big money does not help expand the field of choices or even weed out corruption, but instead ensures only the major parties are able to compete. The result is that major party incumbents become safe in their seats. The Federal Election Campaign Act (or FECA) should correctly be called the Incumbents Protection Act, Bennett writes.

Put simply, anyone serious about election reform needs to read Not Invited to the Party. Bennett has put together a mass of information that shows why the electoral reform community has missed the mark by ignoring the issue of ballot access and allowing politicians to continue to violate American citizen's freedom of speech at the ballot box.

Bennett says that we must break down these barriers to ballot access and replace them "with commonsense rules that permit the widest possible variety of candidates and parties to participate… [and] reduce the powers of the central government and the privileges and subsides it hands out."

It is a sad day when it is easier to get on the ballot in post-Soviet Moscow and post- Saddam Hussein Iraq than it is in many American states such as Oklahoma and North Carolina. Bennett quotes Economists Burton A. Abrams and Russell F. Settle who said "[free] markets and individual liberty have served the United States and its citizens well. Why adopt a non-market solution for running political campaigns?"

Competition is healthy for the state and good for its citizens. As Bennett advocates in Not Invited to the Parties, we need to restore competition to the ballot in all 50 American states and allow all American's to exercise their right to vote again.

Copyright © 2010 Jordon M. Greene. Jordon M. Greene is the President and Founder of the North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections PAC, member of the Constitution Party of North Carolina's State Executive Committee and Ballot Access Committee, Political Science student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and formerly served in 2008 as Campaign Manager for the Bryan Greene 2008 Congressional Campaign Committee.