Ralph Nader was on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" today. George wanted to talk about Nader's comments saying that Obama was "talking white", but Ralph was determined to get his message across about the two party system. This led to some amusing exchanges where George accused Ralph of changing the subject, which Ralph would deny before changing the subject again.
At 5:00 in the video Ralph says, "I think the 2 parties are hurting our country and they need more competition." Amen to that.
Then at 5:30, Ralph Nader makes an excellent point about ballot access. Unfortunately it gets lost in the conversation. One problem with Nader is that he throws too many issues out all at once. He should realize that most people can't handle that much information.
Anyway, I googled "ballot access laws" and he's absolutely right. Since the 1880's there have been restrictive ballot access laws in the US. Just think about this. You can walk into any supermarket and have a choice of 40 or more different breakfast cereals, but when voting for President you have only 2 choices in most cases. What's more important: breakfast cereal or the choice of President?
We support competition and free choice in the marketplace but not in the voting booth. Why can't we walk into a polling place, select a box that represents the candidate we want to vote for, and scan it into the voting machine. The machine then prints out a receipt for us and for the official records and were on our way home. If it works for choosing a breakfast cereal, then why not for choosing a President?
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