discrepancy can not only have a name thrown out but a whole page of petitions john introduced me as jim bennett if i put down my name as a james bennett then that would be considered an and valid petition signing failing to dot the i's or cross the t's all of those things can invalidate so the real issue is you probably need a tender 20% more than the minimum to be sure to get on the ballot and the democrats and conservatives hire lawyers to challenge the petitions and the third party candidate needs to of course, hired counsel to oppose the council that the duopoly brings to bear on the problem. stringent access laws spread like wildfire in the 30's two sort the communist party candidates 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 and independent candidates but certainly not to the democrats or republicans. clearing hurdles throughout the nation nearly to get on the ballot exhaust the energies and resources of independent candidates and third-party is. over one pie eig

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

please welcome jim bennett, our author today. [applause] >> thank you john. thank you to our house that kato who was a little surprised that ralph nader had written a forward to this book. my credentials sudden they crumble. [laughter] but that is all right. at the after words was a written by a fed chairman of the libertarian committees alliance in which between the two extremes and i think it is a great thing. something has to be seriously wrong when you have ralph nader praising my work on the one hand and bill all the other. i am a professor of economics at george mason and we pride ourselves on our specialty in the field of public choice. this is the economics of politics. i came to this issue because of the fact that i began to notice other than democrats republicans despite the excitement soon faded in the political arena was not considered seriously. i began to wonder what was going on. as an academic one of the first things that you do is what else has been done in this field? i found very little has been done by the political science academics. appa

our first speaker will be our author, jim bennett. jim is an eminent scholar at george mason university and holds the william snavly chair of public policy in the department of economics and say director of the ollin institute for public practice and policy. he received his ph.d. in 1970 from case western reserve and has specialized in research related to public policy issues, the economics of government and bureaucracy, labor unions and health charities. he is founder and editor of the journal of labor research and has published more than 60 articles in professional journals such as the american economic review public choice and others. he has written many books of which i shall mention one to you. he is the author of destroying democracy, how government funds partisan politics, published by the cato institute in 1986. i ask you please to welcome jim bennett, our author today. [applause] >> thanks much, john. and thanks to our host here at cato, dave bose, who is a little bit surprised when he learned ralph nader had written a forwar

i think that party is, we have gone a long way, as jim bennett describes in his book, toward having the government take over many things that the parties did previously. while i agree with some of those, i don't agree with his criticisms of the australian ballot with the main part of was to make sure we had a secret ballot, which is vital to democracy. i don't think that switching to a primary system where the parties have absolutely no control over the process and no control about who comes in to vote, i don't think that is necessarily a good thing unless you really want to destroy having any parties at all. >> the gentleman in the second row from the back. close to the end. >> yes. grass roots director of citizens in charge and the citizens charged foundation. i want to give teresa an opportunity to expand on some of her proposed solutions. the funds would presumably be controlled by the existing parties and people in power. i wonder if you can address how that would help third parties out if you have to go and is essentially not on the door of the existing powers to get into that. >>

the opponent of her so that she would lose, and i think parties-- we have gone a long way as did jim bennett describes in his book, towards having the government take over many things that the parties did previously. while i do agree with some of those, like it don't agree with the australian ballot which the main part of was to make sure we had a secret ballot which i think is vital to democracy but i don't think switching to a primary system where the parties have no control over the process and have absolutely no control about who comes into vote, i don't think that is necessarily a good thing unless you want to destroy having any parties at all. >> gentleman in the second row from the back. we will get away from the front a little bit. >> i am brandon, director of citizens in charge and the citizens in charge foundation. i want to give theresa an opportunity to expand on some of proposed solutions. one of my personal sections to public finances always been the funds would be presumably controlled by the existing party than the existing people empower and i wonder if you could address how