Eye Recommend --- Republicans Target Minor Parties After Election Losses

REPUBLICANS TARGET MINOR PARTIES AFTER ELECTION LOSSES, by Reid Wilson --
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/10/31/republicans-target-minor-parties-after-election-losses/

I found this article in yesterday's Washington Post.  It looks like restrictive voter ID laws aren't enough for the Republican Party.  Now they want to stop small political parties like the Libertarians and the Green Party from even participating in an election because they believe that they are taking votes away from Republican candidates.

"Republican legislators and political activists in several red states are taking steps to make it harder for minor party candidates to make the ballot after a string of elections Democrats won with less than 50 percent of the vote.

The Ohio legislature voted earlier this week to require minor parties to collect signatures of 1 percent of the number of voters who cast ballots in the last gubernatorial or presidential election. Libertarians and Green Party members complain that the rule--which would require them to gather about 56,000 signatures to make the 2014 ballot--sets an impossibly high standard.

In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed legislation earlier this year to require candidates running for Congress to collect enough signatures to represent one-third of 1 percent of registered voters in their respective districts.  That's a 40-fold increase in the number of signatures Libertarian Party candidates would have to collect."

In Arizona, Republicans blame their loss in two 2012 races for the U.S. House of Representatives on Libertarian candidates.  Libertarians took 6% of the vote and Republicans believe that, if the Libertarian candidates had been excluded from the ballot, those votes would have gone to Republican candidates and the two Democrats who won seats in the House would have been defeated.

"And in Montana, an initiative to implement a top-two election system, under which only the two top candidates in a primary will advance to the general election, regardless of party, will be on the 2014 ballot...opponents of the Montana law say it would leave out Libertarians, who have captured a significant percentage of the vote in recent statewide races.

Republican-controlled states like Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Georgia all moved to raise thresholds for minor parties to qualify for the ballot this year...

...'Many of the laws that we're seeing are about restricting democracy,' said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project. 'especially in places that have been historic battlegrounds, or in places where we see demographics changing.'

(People) upset with Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) see the (Ohio) proposal as a way to keep Kasich opponents off the ballot.  The bill's (detractors)...call it the 'John Kasich Re-Election Protection Act.'

'As written, it will wipe us out of our primary for 2014,' said Bob Bridges, the Ohio Libertarian Party's political director. 'It gives the two major parties, as if they don't have enough of an advantage over challenger parties, a severe advantage when it comes to campaigning.'

Ohio Sen. Bill Seitz (R), who sponsored the bill, didn't return messages seeking comment."

The Republican two-step plan for dominance: 1) stop the people from voting for the opposition 2) eliminate the opposition.