Perhaps if either the petition requirement or the draconian qualifying fee was removed we wouldn’t have a majority of races virtually unopposed.

I _know_ the LP gets 75% of their candidate’s fees refunded to them. I also know the county GOP parties get a cut of candidates who qualify for county office.

Do you mean to say the fact that they do not have to run in a primary is a reason to cheat them out of their qualifying fees? If there is no primary, the government does not have to run a special election to accommodate them. The one and only reason for the primary is to benefit only the Republican and Democratic Parties. They should be paying for every single last dollar of those elections, or ballot access laws should be made more lenient.

i know for the local races, our local gop actually had to conduct the qualifying to get their share of the fee, but this is hardly an area of expertise of mine…

I wonder if there are grounds for a federal equal protection suit in that?

It would be nice if Federal judges would stop acting like Republicans and Democrats and more like neutral arbitors of law.

If they were worried about the cost of run-offs, then they should end the practice of refunding 75% of a candidate’s qualifying fee back to the political party the candidate belongs to.

It may just be a knee jerk reaction on my part, which means i will probably carry throuogh on voting for Saxby in the run-off as I promissed. I am just about fed up with the Republican party, though. How many stupid things do they have to propose before enough is enough. The majority requirement on election is probably the soundest election policy in the nation. Then to use the excuse of how much runoffs cost. Elections are a tiny fraction of what the state has no problem blowing through each and every year on frivalities.

I would much rather them junk the primary election, which is to the sole benefit of political parties and just have a LA style election.

I wouldn’t confuse the motives of the dim bulbs in the GA legislature who are using Saxby’s runoff as an excuse to do what they wanted to do last cycle with why you should or should not vote for Saxby.

The Republicans in the GA legislature would do well to remember that one of the key motives for voter anger when the Gov’s office and State Senate went Republican was the long list of self-serving changes to voting laws and district maps that the dems pushed through.

I was going to add that. Half the reason why the Democratic and Republican parties are so bad is that their counterparts are bad. Why sprint at full spead if you are running against someone with shin splints?

The worst thing for a political party is to have an incompetent opposition party (See: Republican Party 2000-2006).

You obviously haven’t followed me for the close to 4 years that I’ve been blogging as I have been one of the biggest critics of the inept DPG out there. I have also been a huge critic of Dubose Porter, calling for his resignation as Democratic Leader on several occasions, as well as calling out Democratic members of for some of their stupid votes. I was also heavily critical of the campaigns that Cathy Cox and Mark Taylor ran, and voted for neither of them and voted for the Libertarian in the general. And I have on many occasions criticized the Democratic Party for failing to run candidates in winnable races or getting behind losers (like, say, Keith Gross) in winnable races.

I do not like partisan hackery on the left or the right. I have just denounced the GOP for trying to muck with the election laws because Saxby is in a runoff. On this board, you, as well as a number of others on the left and the right, look at every issue through the prism of how it can hurt your opponent or help your side before deciding if you are for or against something.

How about ciriticizing the Democrats for once? If you really want that party to improve, how about working to improve it instead of just trying to tear the Republicans down?

Again, who is the partisan hack here?

Huh? The Republican leaders in the State Legislature just a couple of years ago proposed and voted for the extended early voting period. They thought it was a great idea because it would give their base, who had a history of using early and absentee voting more than the Democratic base, and thought it would give their party an advantage.

Now, immidiately after this election, where Democrats saw gains, particularly among early voters, those same Republican leaders want to change the law. Eric Johnson wants to end early voting all together and Austin Scott wants to shorten the period of time. And not because “too much can happen in that last 45 days,” but they have gone back to the potential for “voter fraud.”

Again, huh? I thought the voter ID law was supposed to take care of that.

If anyone is being a “partisan hack” on this issue, it is the Republican leadership.

But, of course, this is going to go nowhere, because it will be extremely unpopular among their constituents.