then and so forth. now, the second and in my view the most important impediment to third parties is the so-called government reform, you know, when libertarians hear that government is being reformed by politicians, we always grab our wallets. and the idea of the australian ballot is that the government will prevent -- will print and provide the ballots. prior to the 1890s, ballots were privately printed by the parties themselves. so that any party could print up a ballot with any slate of candidates that they wanted. but in the 1890s in response to a lot of corruption that occurred in the 1888 elections, governments began to supply a single consolidated ballot for all candidates for all offices. this was the australian ballot. and by 1910, only two states did

not use the australian ballot. by the way, one of those in south carolina permitted the use of private ballots up until 1950. . ..

>> some states require tens of thousands of valid signatures on petitions just to appear on the state ballot. and oklahoma, and 2008 for example, more than 40000 signatures were required just to appear on the ballot. and emphasis here is on the word valid. the slightest discrepancy can not have only a name thrown out, but a whole page of petitions. for example, john introduced me as jim bennett. and if i put down my name is james t. bennett and my address and signed jim bennett, that would be considered, you know, a bad -- and invalid petition signing.

failing to dot an eye or cross the t., all of these kinds of things can invalidate whole pages. so the real issue is as you probably need 10 or 20% more than the minimum in order to be assured to get on the ballot, and the democrats and republicans, each election, hired lawyers and so on to challenge these petitions and a third party candidate needs to of course, higher counsel to oppose the council that the duopoly brings to bear on the problem. stringent access laws spread like wildfire in the 1930s to thwart the communist party candidate. although, the communist party was never a serious contender in any election. but the same restrictions that apply to the communist party also applied to the third parties of the independent

candidates, but certain not to the democrats and republicans. put simply, clearing the hurdles throughout the nation emirate to get on the ballot often exhaust both the energies and resources of independent candidates and their parties. in the 2008 election, over 1.5 million valid signatures were needed if a third party were to appear on the ballot in every state in the union. couple these honors petition requirements with early deadlines come and democrats and republicans are on the ballot by definition, so they don't worry about filing deadlines. but when you are submitting petitions, they often have to be presented weeks or months in advance of the time that -- prior to the printing of the ballots. so it is also imposes serious expense and difficulties for the

people outside of the duopoly. third party candidates are often viewed as spoilers, out to deny the democrats and republicans their rightful offices. witness, for example, the scorn heaped on ralph nader who is inappropriately blamed for denying the inventor of the internet the presidency. in truth, ballot clutter really has never occurred. and after all, even kooks who want to be on the bout had some rights, at least they did under the constitution. what has been sold to the american public as a good government measure is simply a way to eliminate political competition at the ballot box. there are other laws that the demopublicans have passed as well to impede and if not eliminate, challenges. so-called sore loser laws prevent those who lost in a

primary from then running as an independent in taking votes away from the party on which they ran in the primary. and at fusion laws have a candidate with multiple parties would benefit independent candidacies. the republicans and the democrats don't ever fuse. by enacting such laws, the demopublicans had used the power of government to stifle and oppressed third parties, and independent candidates. it's little wonder that turnout is so low that we typically have, because we typically only have a realistic choice between tweedledee and twiddle dumber at the ballot box. a third impediment, and i had to use that word again, is campaign reform. again, once anytime you hear politicians are reforming

something, the news for the general public is inevitably bad. money is the lifeblood of politics. taxpayer funding of campaigns and even conventions also benefits the democrats and republicans. federal law limits contributions by individuals thus disclosing the possibility that an independent might make an effective run for office with just a couple of wealthy old backers. with government money however, comes strings. and the strings and evidently benefit the duopoly. and they, of course, mp challengers. the good government side of campaign reform is just another way of privileging the outsiders and protecting the status quo. all these so-called limits were neatly excluded with loopholes, contributions for pack, software and all that kind of stuff.

corporations always looking for welfare handouts from government have little interest in independents and third parties. both the left and the right in other words, ralph and bill got here. by the way, they're on opposite sides of the room. that make use of the. are posed in my opinion, they agree on one thing certainly, and that is the ending of corporate welfare. but anyway, the vast majority of taxpayer dollars allocated for politics have naturally enriched the demopublicans. the only candidate who actually got a significant sum was ross perot in 1996, who got roughly one eighth of the $234 million distributed by third parties and independents, even if they do get tax funds for their political campaigns, take it

after the election. so you need to get at least 5 percent of the vote in order to get any federal money, and of course, you have to have the election before you can determine whether you get 5 percent of the vote. so the simple fact is tee time in december what, when the election was in november is not terribly helpful. and by the way, incumbents in office already have enormous advantages over challenges, constituent newsletters, access to the media, gerrymandering and so on. in short, the demopublican version of finance reform is little more than an incumbent protection act to exclude outsiders. the fourth impediment and balls the media. here we have a self-fulfilling prophecy. the media refuses to give

serious news coverage to independence because they are unlikely to enter of course, independence are unlikely to win because the demopublicans have used the power of government to harass them at every turn and minimize the participation in the election process, which excludes them from media coverage. if you can't get your views and positions out of public and make yourself known, you sort are going to get elected. and yet another of those good government moves, the demopublicans established the commission on presidential debates in 1987 to decide who will appear and the rules for participating. guess who cochairs this group? it is headed by the former chairman of the democratic and the former chair of the republican national committee's. so you can bet your last nickel that the commission has little interest in bringing new ideas

and non-duopoly candidates to the general public. to participate you had to get 15 percent of the vote from previous election, which of course guarantees a role for the democrat and the republican candidate. but other candidates were shut out, and incidentally even getting 50% doesn't guarantee to much won the demopublicans are there because while ross perot got 19%, and in 1976 was denied access to the debates even though he got well over the limit in 1992. hey, hypocrisy is not the strong point -- is not a serious consideration when it comes to political maneuverings. and we can talk a little bit about the united states signing the copenhagen document at the helsinki accords, which talks about political freedoms that require a clear separation between the state and political parties. yeah, right.

and the signatories agreed to respect the right of citizens to seek a political or public office individually or as a representative political parties without discrimination. yeah, right. well, as i mentioned before, have hocrisy is not a serious problem when it comes to politics. and i would just know by the way that in iran in the last presidential election, they had some seven candidates and of course pointing a finger at us as the weight we do things. in my book i discuss in some detail the role of the third party and independent and a 2008 election. and more accurately, they're almost unfortunate non-role in that election. and i briefly surveyed how other developed countries hold elections that it's sufficient to say that edward parties are increasingly common part of the apparatus of the state through subsidies. however, ballot access laws are typically nowhere near as severe as those here in the so-called

land of the free. now, let me wrap up, because there are people here who have a lot more experience with this in a hands-on sense than i do, and i think they should have time. like i say, i am an ivory tower academic. but i would like to suggest what you can do. first i will talk about ideally what i would like to see don. ideally, we need to dramatically reduce the size and scope of government. we need to sharply reduce its powers and privileges and hands out. we need to slash government spending and transfer payments. to be honest, in my view, a great deal of what the government does at all levels is simply unconstitutional. a limited government would mean that who actually served in government doesn't matter very much.

and the incentives to restrict participation in elections would also decline markedly. way would benefit i taking some lessons on government from the swiss. the typical swiss citizen doesn't matter that much. now having advanced by ideal solution i must admit that it is about the same likelihood of being adopted as the likelihood that i'm struck by a media right on the way home from this event. and if we try to heal the operation by having multimember districts, that is an appealing idea but it is something that will not happen simply because of differences between rural district in urban districts, and so on and so forth and it is also unlikely that we're going to be able to ever return to the privately printed paper ballots. a lot of this has to do with what happened down in florida.

realistically, what we need to do is deregulate the election process, get government out of politics. first, repeal all ballot access laws. modern technology it seems to me can cope with many candidates. in the unlikely event that suddenly everyone wants to run for the presidency of the public office, we could set reasonable limits for ballot access, say, you had to get 500 signatures and have a modest filing fee, say $2500 or so and had the filing fee refundable if you get say, a thousand votes or whatever. repeal sore loser and intuition laws. three, repeal all restrictions on campaign finance. all donations would be legal, you know, despite the source of the amount. but i would suggest we require prompt and public disclosure on the internet.

under my scheme of politicians to still be bought with at least know who was doing the buying. and all party subsidies for the taxpayer. and i think bill redpath, in his afterword has a wonderful idea about initiating instant runoff voting. instead of picking just one candidate for office, voters will express their preference by ranking candidates won, two, three to give no clear majority in the end, the person on the bottoms that would be transferred to other candidates. now this would give a great deal of interest in independent candidates because of the fact that the public would be interested in these people. and in addition, another major blessing would be that it would probably reduce greatly negative campaigning, for those of us who live in this area i've heard more about a 20 year old masters

thesis that i want to even talk about. so those are basically my suggestions, and john has given me saying i have one more minute. before i'm accused of aggression or something which is against libertarian principle, i will sit down. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. before turning to teresa i wanted to mention, single out all recognize three of our distinguished guests today. first as was mentioned ralph nader, who ran as a third party presidential candidate twice, at least. [applause] >> route has been coming to cato, i have seen in the second time in just a couple of months. if you keep doing that row, either you're going to become a libertarian or we're going to become naderites. i don't know what you want. [laughter] >> and mentioning bill redpath, the national libertarian party is here also. welcome. [applause]

>> and finally christina tobin of the free and equal elections organization. if you live in california and vote in california, you might want to keep the name christina tobin in mind as time passes. i should say that doesn't constitute an adores of the cato institute that it is simply a rogue element exercising free speech. i live in a deep fear of violating finance law somehow. theresa amato is the author of grand illusion. the myth of voter choice and a two-party tyranny. she was the national presidential campaign manager and in house counsel for ralph nader in 2002004. she graduate from harvard university and a new york university law school. she found the citizens advocacy center in suburban chicago and worked with many nonprofit

organizations. she has been a fellow also at harvard institute of politics at the jfk school and public law fellow at the harvard law school. a very pike's peak on this topic, theresa amato. [applause] >> good afternoon. and thank you, john samples, and thank you cato institute for hosting a forum on ballot access and on the important discussion we're hearing today. thank you all of you for coming because this is quite a turnout to hear about the systemic barriers to entry for third parties and independent in the political process but it's not the kind of thing that makes the front page of a major newspapers every day, and it's very nice of you to share in this and for this to be covered. so i'd like to encourage other think tanks and the media to host these kinds of discussions, because this is one of those

topics you don't hear quite often enough. and let me say congratulations to jim bennett for producing an excellent book. you have a copy here. i do hold it up again, because i read jim bennett's book, and first thing i does was in the first paragraph or so he said, he took a swipe at lawyers. and as you heard here, oh. then later on he makes a crack about harvard trained people and i thought, oh, no. and then of course throughout the book he kind of pooh-poohs goo goose as he calls them, people who work for good government and i thought i spent my whole life doing that. and so when i read jim's book i thought, gee, i am jim bennett's perfect nightmare. [laughter] >> except for two things. one, i agree with the major

premise of his book. and added that the system is rigged. it is rigged against the two parties, rather rigged in favor of the two parties to keep out challengers and competition from minor parties and independent candidates. and a second, unlike most academicians, i had the experience of being in the arena twice. once for a minor party presidential candidate when ralph nader chose to run on the green party ticket in 2000. and as presidential national campaign manager for an independent, and that's when ralph nader chose to run again in 2004, despite all of the hullabaloo and outcry against his right to present his used to the american people. and so i really, unlike most people in the planet, because once you run a national presidential campaign, you will never do it again. if you are saying. have had this experience twice

here so i have the battle scars, and i know how difficult it is firsthand in order to be able to present alternative choices, more voices to the american people every four years when we host a national presidential election. so i would have probably agreed with 90 percent of what jim bennett's had up until the last five minutes. and that's where we made a verge, and i'm sure we do it, and solution. but he has laid out really a part of the problem, so i think what i will do instead is tell you some of the firsthand expenses that we had. and i will start in february of 2000. ralph nader called me up and he said well, would you like to run my presidential campaign. and i said, well, ralph, you know, i was in the middle of

illinois working for nonprofit. anisotropic, the last campaign i ran was student council. and he said that's all right because this is going to be a very different kind of campaign. this is going to be a citizen's campaign. were going to run with the people and were going to put all the issues that are not talked about by the two major parties on the table so that people have a chance to community and talk about the things that are routinely shut out from the national debate every time we have an election. and i thought about it and i thought what he was trying to do, because he is spent four decades in washington and he knew what the score was and how difficult it was for citizens to make concrete change in washington, d.c.. it seemed the government over run by lobbyists and being marinated in corporate campaign cash, and he had also a personal history of being able to open the process of. and i thought, well, if there

were ever a time this would be the time to do it. so i get to washington and you know, i consider myself fairly well read. i read the newspapers every day. i majored in government and economics. i went to law school. i thought how hard could this be? [laughter] >> and then reality sets in. you know, we all grew up under this myth that anyone can run and the president of the united states, right? this is the national lower. that if you try to be anyone and you are not the party favorite of one of the two major parties, what do you. it is nearly impossible to run and effective national campaign. outside of the two-party system. and that's because we have systemic barriers, even if you

have a supremely qualified candidate, even if you have popular support. we have systemic barriers that have made it difficult to compete, and there is no level playing field. so when jim bennett writes in his book the system is rigged and nobody cares, i know what he speaks. let's start with the ballot access. actually, let's start back with a regulatory system. if you haven't had the pleasure of reading 11 cfr, the code of regulations for campaign finance that i suggest you do so. as one person i get it at the federal election commission, explained to me it is like asking a lawyer -- rather, i said i'm a lawyer. i will be able to figure this out. and he said, no, it's really like asking a general practitioner, a doctor, to perform brain surgery, and you have to learn all of this while you are doing your other job 24/7.

it is extremely difficult to navigate the regulatory and even though, even the people who work at the federal election commission don't agree on what has been in the federal election election to pick and i'm sure we'll hear from that from our next speaker. worse, if you call up for information you find out the standard pat answer and really it is a supremely confident and division that is not their fault that it is just that the regulations are written for third parties and independent candidates and oftentimes they have no idea what the answer is as applied to third parties and independent candidates. so they will say, the code inside it. so you have to go and ask for an advisory opinion, and i could take much we really needed need to answer yesterday. that's one problem. the other problem is that people don't agree on what the code says. and of course the third problem

is that really the code is not written for a grassroots kind of campaign. in fact, some at the sec told when i tried to paint a hypothetical that, you know, these laws are not written for a grassroots campaign. i thought, there's a big problem right there. so extraordinary difficult if you don't come with a cottage industry of lawyers, people who aren't savvy in how these laws have been applied and fundamental background and understanding, and really extend mechanism or vehicle like a major part in order to navigate the regular framework. that having been said, i think that needs to be improved. i would not agree to get rid of it, but we will talk about that in a minute. the major hurdle every third party and independent candidate faces is 51 different ballot access laws. jim painted some of the picture but the reality and the nightmare is unbelievable, because every single third party candidate and independent will

tell you the majority of the resources, all the blood, sweat and tears goes to getting on about. because if you're not on about your just not a choice. and this is a system that the ballot laws is very important to note are written by you? the democrats and the republicans who occupied the general smes and the state legislatures and every one of the state. and so even though some of the states are quite reasonable, other states are off the charts and they make it intentionally difficult not on artificial application, but if you asked if i do follow-through and submit to these kind of signatures. let's just are with rigatoni mechanisms. i don't have any, i don't know why we continue to do this but have a rashly 13000 election jurisdictions overseeing our federal elections. and so you have a problem with you have all these different jurisdictions, the knowledge there is widely. india if you call the states, sixer estate or the attorneys general office, or whoever, whichever entity is regulating

the election of a particular state, frequently you get something like they're not going to tell you what they're lobbied. for sure, some of them don't know what the law says. second, they are embarrassed that there are laws on the books patently unconstitutional abend held by the courts but they can't get the general assembly to actually change the laws so that it supports what the current legal status is. and so you have to divide all of his. third, oftentimes they are very afraid they might be sued and so they don't want to tell you anything. this is very help you want to run for office. the second reality is that these laws, we aggregate them across 50 states and the district of columbia, as an aggregate burden, it made it virtually impossible for individuals who are outside two parts to be able to compete because you spent two thirds of the campeche is getting to the starting point

where the major two parties are. you spend all your resources doing this. and of course, there's all kinds of side effects in terms of whether or not you are considered, whether you have committed fraud because jim instead of james sign and all those kinds of little barriers that add up into the collective that is very ready to get a candidate who is even able to put his or her name on all 50 ballots. in addition to that, you have hostile media confronting you. in the case of ralph's campaign in 2000, there were three or four editorials that basically said that pat buchanan should not even be in the picture. they were quote wondering the field. just think about that. since when is political competition cluttering the field? that is the disdain with which the mainstream media looks upon independent and third party candidates. it is very difficult to get the

story. when you do get a story it is generally about the horserace. how will you affect the chances of one of two major parties. not why is it that you are taking on this incredible burden and you want to talk to the american people and have a dialogue, and what is it that you are purposing. it is very ready to get a substantive story on the issues. is more how are you going to affect so-and-so's chances? they'd never ask those republican candidates how you going to affect the democrats chances. that's a ridiculous question. so why is appose all the time as the opening question for third party and independent candidates? media is hostile. we grew up in a culture of thinking that somehow we have enshrined a two-party system win at the work party is not even in the constitution. and then of course the media is a big racket, and so a lot of campaign money actually goes as we don't provide free airtime, even though the airwaves belong to the commonwealth to

candidates. a lot of the campaign money has to go to buying spots. some of those bonds will cost as much as the sound of people i work with for a few minutes. just because it is so expensive to break into the media market. and finally it you want to produce your own medium like we did in 2000, then we had the pleasure of being sued because the exercise our free speech rights to parody mastercard for copyright and trademark infringement and then had to battle that as well. so in addition to the media, the ballot access, the rigatoni scheme, there's also a gem of the two, the commission on presidential debate it is a very officials sounding name but it is a private corporaticorporation on new hampshire and an ax as a cartel in terms of who, which candidates get to reach tens of millions of people each year in order to be able, each presidential election to be able to put their points to the tens of the people in any kind of

logical fashion. what they do is they take an average of -- you have to reach 50% and the average of five polls in order to be considered qualified, because they made a very bad mistake in 1992. they let ross perot in the debates and he never wanted to repeat that. and as a consequence, you haven't seen a third party or independent candidate in the presidential debate. so ralph nader could have gone to every stadium as he did like the fleet center, or madison square garden, filled 20000 people and you would never even reach a fraction of the proportion that you would reach on television, of course, would be premature of these serious candidates that should be allowed to have a voice in the election. finally i want to point out that there is -- these are the practical problems, but the answer in the solution to these are fundamentally structural.

we have a lot of band-aid discussion is what i would call, what's going on now about elections of perfection. and there's a reason for that. so in 2000, people proceed i believe wrongly, that because ralph nader received 97000 votes in florida and the margin of difference between al gore and george bush was 537 votes, that it was somehow mr. nader's fault that we ended up with george w. bush to what i would like to point out is that there were other minor party candidates, in fact, eight on the ballot. and all that received more than 537 votes. that's not difficult. of course, there were a number of other factors, like katherine harris, how we purge voter election rolls. the florida supreme court, the intervention of the united states supreme court, but what happened at the end of the day if we can take some kind of national need, that third parties and independent art quote unquote spoilers.

but it's really, really hard to spot an already spoiled system. and hezbollah because of the structural problem, but one of the two major parties, you can guess which one, the democratic party in 2004, made it a mission to make sure ralph nader would not get on the bow and brought 24 losses in the period of 12 weeks to try to stifle competition as the democratic party or its allies on the ground in a number of states. i don't know how many people here have been sued. anybody here ever been sued? very rare. imagine getting 24 losses in the third of 12 weeks before you have a cup of coffee. ruffles start opening up debates, saying this is what democracy looks like. now that kind of systemic oppression to try to exclude third party any to any candidates is something we should just never tolerate in this country. i think on a middling all of the

talk that was created from the 537 votes difference is in florida, a lot of people, the good thing was that people start paying attention to what was going on in their boards of election. they started thinking about how do we register people to vote? why is it we haven't an opt in system? white is at the local voter rolls don't match? why is it there is chaos and everything is done at the last minute to enter new registered voters? why don't we have same-day registration? what is the system and who's paying attention? why do we have uniform standards of what counts as a vote? isn't retake as we have to be holding of punch cards to lysine if it has two hanging chad or three dimpled or pregnant or whatever. and it was really almost a mockery of our system of governance, people looked all around the world and set what are they doing there in the united states? how come they can't determine

what is a vote, who is registered vote? how come they can't determine what grounds constitution progress for an audit or recount? how come the machines don't work? what is it? why are we just asking these questions in the 21st century here in our country? that all that election perfection still will not give you an open and equal competition if you don't have some reform to the systemic barriers to third party and independent candidates. i'm going to stop now so that we can save more time for questions, but i hope you will ask some. thank you. [applause] >> now that you have heard her, remember, it is "grand illusion" by theresa amato of able at your bookstore on line and "not invited to the party" by james bennett which will be available also in both places. our final commentator today will be hans who is senior legal fellow at the heritage

foundation center for legal and judicial studies. where he managed the civil justice reforms and initiatives. in addition, he studied the legal aspects of actions including campaign finance, voter fraud in identification laws and issues arising from registratregistration and equipment. before joining the heritage in 2008, hans served for two years as a member of the federal election commission. previously he worked at the justice department as the counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights. he provided expertise and advice on enforcing the voting rights act and the help america act of 2002. his articles have appeared in "the wall street journal," weekly standard, national review and human events among others that he has testified before state integration committees and has been hesitations to organizations such as the national association of secretaries of state, federalist society, the national council of state legislatures, and the american legislative exchange

council. hans took a lot of at vanderbilt university. he received his bachelor's in political science from mit. please welcome hans. [applause] >> thank you. so i am a lawyer but i didn't go to harvard. that should give me some point. we used to refer as harvard right at mit as the little red schoolhouse down the road. [laughter] >> i have to say i agree with a lot of things that were said here this morning cooperatively when teresa was talking about how horrible the federal election campaign act is and how confusing it is and how difficult it makes for an ordinate person to run for office. in his new book, he outlines many of these problems. he also talks about many of the restrictions on third parties caused by very difficult about access laws implemented by the

state. he also complains about the federal public funding program which has most of you know what was put place about 30 years ago and point out the problems with those states like wisconsin, that have put in state versions of public funding for state legislative candidates. those public funding programs have not achieved any of the supposed purposes that so-called campaign reformers have used to push them. in fact, even under public funding laws, challengers have a harder time knocking off incumbents and i think under a private system. i want to skip to the end of professor bennett's book by saying that i agreed with many of his conclusions. for example, i agree that restrictive ballot access laws should be relaxed as a matter of fundamental fairness. at an interest of democracy, or in our case, republicanism since we are republic. and not a democracy in the strictest sense of the word.

i believe in competition, something john talked about, and i particularly believe in competition in the political arena. i also think the same thing about anti-fusion laws, and also the campaign-finance law that we have on a federal level also needs to be radically changed. however, i wouldn't have -- i have arguments with some of the things he says in the book. for example, the idea that doing all this is going to lead to some sort of renaissance in the american policy to provide a surge of new policies for disgust, debated throughout the political world is, i think, an overly optimistic assumptions. i also fundamentally disagree with the constant theme expressed throughout the book. there is no difference between the two major parties. there are simply two sides of the same coin. that would come as quite a surprise to many other legislators in congress, on the republican side of the political

aisle who right now and for the last couple of months have been waiting quite a fight to try and stop the nationalization of our health care system. and the disruption of our economy by the cap and taxes of up environmental extremism that is being vigorously pushed by the president and his political party. i think those issues alone illustratillustrate some very stark differences in the public-policy viewpoint of the republican and democratic parties. and i find it difficult to agree with the claim that the two parties are the rest of ideas. there's no doubt there are people in both parties that are like that. but i think that's true of all political parties. there are also many individual members candidates in those two parties, and in the other independent parties, who have fundamentally different outlooks on our constitution, our government, and our social and economic policies. and i think it is a denial of reality to claim otherwise.

now critics of my point you are going to point to some members of the republican party, like two senators from maine who far too often vote with the other major party. but there's no party anywhere, and that includes the independent parties, talk about professor bennett's book like the green party and the libertarian party whose members agree 100 percent of the time on all issues. or who never agreed with the views on certain issues and members of the other two major political parties. i also agree with professor bennett's description of the federal election campaign act and the amendment to it and body in the bipartisan campaign reform act of 2002, also known as mccain-feingold which i had the misfortune to have to try to enforce when i was on the fec. i have expressed my opinion on this on more than one occasion. i got into big trouble at one of my first hearings that we had when i was on the fec when i said to a member, a lawyer who

was there from democracy 21 who is one of the day campaign reform organizations. when i compared the passage of the mccain-feingold law to the passage of the alien act of 1798. in fact, the fact that i had said that adhering was decided against a publicly in the nomination fight i had trying to get on the fcc. as a doctor that has put out i think the supreme court made a fundamental error when it upheld the main parts of the fecal law in the buckley versus lao decision that and i headed to having been a commissioner for two years that the fec i think is a terrible idea to have a federal bureaucracy making decisions on what kind of political activity and what kind of political speech is acceptable or not acceptable under the force of federal law. i think the feca law has protected them, then made it very difficult for ordinary citizens to run for office as i have said. because it is a byzantine and

confusing law, even the six commissioners who run it often disagree doing their best as lawyer to try to figure out what the law prohibits and what it doesn't. i also think that the mccain-feingold law is directly responsible for the huge growth of 527 and other organizations like that, because we did in 2002 is it imposing a lot of restrictions on the political parties, the money they can get and the activities they can engage in. and while you may not like particular parties, there's a lot more response cache but if you don't like this particular ad that a political party is running, well, there are things you can do. you can not give money to that political party. you can work against its candidates. is hard to do that with a 527 organization. i do think however that doctor

bennett makes a mistake in his book because he makes some sweeping generalizations about areas of the law but do a disservice to all not a very principled individuals that i have met with and work with in washington that he refers to all the commissioners who served on the fec as political hacks who only vote the way their political party wants to do. i can say that is false. i mean, i know most of the republican commissioners who served on the fec, including bradley smith iwai replaced, in effect doctor bennett quotes bradley smith in his book. feca is a bad law. with all the commissioners that i knew, they did their best to try to enforce that law because they have taken an oath when they became commissioners to uphold the law. the claim that all of the votes that they may on the commission are partyline vote is also demonstrably false. if you take a look at the history of voting on the fec

said the agency first came in 30 years ago, you will find that in enforcement cases, these are cases where they are deciding whether someone has violated the law, the number of split votes, remember, it is a six member commission. three republicans, three democrats out there. the number of a split vote where they can't make a decision is less than 1 percent of all cases. most of the cases are unanimous. so in terms of enforcing the law on a nonpartisan basis, whether the person in front of them is a democrat or republican, libertarian, they don't vote on a partyline basis in the history of the fec shows that. now where the split votes have occurred and there were split those when i was there, it is invariably been in areas of policy, new regulations, in areas where the law is ambiguous and unclear. i can tell you that i and the other republican commissioners ainu, whenever there was a place we could actually vote a less

restrictive view of the law, that was before we talk. and what you saw, what i saw was it wasn't so much a party breakdown based on party lines and party loyalty, but it was just the fact that most of the republican commissioners, there were exceptions, were less regulatory minded indie political area. and most of the democratic commissioners were more regulatory minded in that area. i will give you one more fact that i think demonstrates that the republican commissioners don't like they feca law and is not, are not part of some kind of conspiracy to keep the law in place, to try to keep the independent parties and other parties out of it. i recently, along with seven other former republican commissioners, who represent almost every republican commissioner that served on -- we filed an amicus brief in the supreme court, which many of you may know is a case trying to get

part of the mccain-feingold law declared unconstitutional as a violation of the first amendment. we didn't file on the side of the fec and the law. we all found on the side of citizens united trying to convince the court that with our long experience, 75 years with the might of enforcing this law, we said to the court this is an unenforceable, confusing law. is unconstitutional. you should overturn it. also the idea that, again, republicans are perfectly happy with this law and a part of some kind of democratic and spirited to keep it in, i think again is demonstrably not true. it's very true senator mccain is the poster child for this law, but is almost alone on his side of the political aisle in supporting this law. women to vote him down in 2002, the majority democrats voted for this law in the house and senate only a small minority of

republicans voted for the majority of republicans voted against this law because they didn't like it did almost all of the major lawsuits that have been brought to try to get this law overturned, republicans have filed them, including two pending lawsuits right now which are going up against the restrictions on the parties which, if frankly, if they win the case will help independent parties also. because of these laws are arguing about the restrictions placed on the parties who are engaging in activity in state elections like the elections going on in virginia and new jersey. two other points just briefly. i think we're running out of time here, right? first of all, the idea that having multiple parties instead of just two will somehow result in our solving the many problems we face today i think is an optimistic assumption. that doesn't have a basis.

don't get it wrong. i think they're parties and candidates should be able to get on about it i think they should be able to feel and i am hopeful that doing so will analyze the political debate and discussions that go on in this country. i don't think any of the parties should be giving public money of any kind. in fact, i recently wrote an article in politico going against the latest proposal that is in congress. been proposed by senator durbin that would not only, we would not only having funding for president who campaigned but he is proposing funding for congressional campaign. look, there are numerous countries in europe such as italy that have multiple parties that split the reins of power. and they often find themselves unable to take any actions in terms of government policy that are at all controversial because they find it impossible to put together the majority coalition that can get anything done. the more party to share control of the government i think the

more difficult it is to have affected governments. i also don't like proportional representation in voting and i disagree with the idea that requiring candidates and districts to win a majority of the vote is somehow a bad requirement for the democratic process. i think it's a good requirement. it means candidates have to deal ideas and solutions to problems that a majority of voters think is a good idea. the majority of code requirement and forces candidates to try to build coalitions and you with multiple interest groups, which i think we ate a better overall representation. frankly, it also prevents individuals from radical ideas that only a small minority of voters agree with from getting elected to positions where they may have considerable power to implement their particular views that a majority of americans do not agree with. it can potentially prevent changes in economic, social and government policy that go against the consent of the government.

the consent of the governed is the most basic philosophical and political beliefs that this country is based on. overall, i think this is very an informative book to get point to an equity analyst mcgovern are election process bashing i didn't think should be fixed if i do not agree with some of the characterizations in it but i agree with many of the proposed solutions, such as simplifying about access and moving to a much less restricted campaign-finance system. thanks. [applause] >> thank you very much, hans. i'm sure the speeches today have given everyone food for thought. and also prompted some questions. so we are going to have questions not. please raise your hand and wait for the microphone to come, and then when you get it identify yourself, organization you are involved with, or your affiliation here and also, please direct a question to one of the people up here so that

they can respond to it. let's go with gentleman down here. the microphone, please. >> i am robert steele. is this working? from virginia's 11th district. my question, and i regret that jackie and city are not here. is an honor to be in the room with ralph nader. why can't we get everybody to play well together and take the ideas and ralph nader spoke less there are 800 the electoral reform principles. why can't we get the greens, libertarians and independents that basically demand of obama as the price of anything in 2010, that he passed electoral reform act of 2009? >> i will assume everyone. >> go ahead. >> well, i have no problem with the. i think it is a wonderful idea, we just need to open up -- we need new choices, new voices.

actually, third parties, independent candidates do just what cato is trying to do and what heritage is trying to do. they are trying to increase the range of political debate. >> good to meet you in person, mr. steele. thank you for coming. and i would like to say that it's really -- minor parties and third parties and independents, they don't all have the same platform. they can get together and should get together on removing this systemic barriers to entry, but after that they will compete for the both of the american people on their own, and from their own ideological perspectives and the various platforms. it's really not a job to fix the entire electoral process. it is all of our jobs, and i want to make something clear so that we can percolate some questions here. i don't agree with most of what hans von spakovsky said and the solutions that have been proposed by either of these two gentlemen.

i am a republic financing of campaigns. i am for proportional representation and runoff voting for i am poor choice maximizing systems on how we are able to select our candidates, and i'm not for corporations being able to dive back into people's districts and be able to finance and particular candidate. i don't believe they hold a same that we do as individuals and assert we don't have the right to vote, at least not yet. so i hope that will help inspire some questions and we'll talk about because we've sorted all don't agree on what the solutions are, even though some of us do agree on what the problems are. that's why people of all political stripes have to nod as in their own cultural cul-de-sacs, and come out and come talk at cato or come talk at other organizations. there are a number of organizations in this room, not

only christina tobin with free and equal elections, but there is also represented here from fair folk, airboat their vote.org, and as well as citizens in charge. this is in charge foundation that there are a lot of organizations who are starting to work on these systemic problems, and i hope they will come up also. >> my only response to the proposal is good luck trying to convince the president to try to do anything that might eliminate his prospects in 2012. >> this gentleman right here. >> my name is mr. lancaster. he said to me partis might make it possible to govern it and what i want to know is what's magic about to? why not go for one? >> arguably we have that. >> i think you're mischaracterizing what i said. what i'm saying is i think about

access laws should be relaxed so that third and fourth and fifth parties can get on there. but the idea that that will somehow magically solve many of the problems we have, i think is belied by the fact that you can look at other plenty of democracies that have multiple parties, and they face many of the same problems we do and i don't see any better in finding solutions. >> let me use the privilege of the moderator to ask a question here. is that the expert here, do you believe that third parties in a larger role for third parties employ proportional representation, either just changing the system are also some voting procedure that would give you that? or can you do any single member district? >> well, first of all, i want to go back to put this in context. in the last 30 years, there's been a wave of democratization in the world.

however, we've had a lot of countries who were not democracies aren't democratic republics and what not. who have chosen to become more democratic. and in that wave, not one has chosen to adopt the united states system. and we should ask why. because it doesn't provide the same kind of representation. i do believe we should have proportional representation and if we don't get there yet, choice of maximizing system or a combination thereof because how many people saw the front page of "the new york times" article on wednesday, october 7? they talk about new york city had a runoff election, in a city of 8 million people, almost nobody showed up to vote. 3 million registered democrats and you had some districts were actually nobody, nobody came to vote. we can do better than this, and