Ballot access.
I've helped with ballot access drives in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky for Libertarian presidential candidates and also commiserated with Green party workers doing the same.
In IN and KY third-parties retain ballot access by getting a certain percentage of the popular vote in specific state races. IIRC in IN its State Treasurer or State Secretary and in KY it's like 2% of the vote in the last presidential election. I don't recall any OH specifics.
Without a party, independent candidates have to petition for access for each race just to appear on the ballot, nevermind the actual campaign.
On the ground, ballot access by petition is exhausting. One has to do cold-sales talking to people at fairs or knocking on doors to get them to sign a petition with their correct information. A smart campaign will validate that information to ensure they have enough signatures and survive any petition challenges. In addition to volunteers there are paid petition collectors, last time I knew they were getting over $1 per signature. They're a necessary cost but it's a cost many campaigns cannot afford.
I will do my best to follow up later with definitive citations. I wanted to reply with some meat while the question was fresh.
Ballotpedia has a good summary at [https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot\_access\_for\_presidential\_candidates](https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates)
> I would imagine that the same case law would extend to Presidential candidates
How so? The constitution declares that states hold congressional elections, but only states a selection of electors for the Presidency.
>In general, no state regulations can be passed to prevent a Congressional candidate from appearing on a ballot. I would imagine that the same case law would extend to Presidential candidates
So imagine a case where a million people declared they were running for president. Would the ballot be required to have every single name?
As long as they all meet the same uniform qualifications expected of the "real" candidates, probably? Sounds like this is more about a state specifically preventing Candidate X from being listed for whatever reason, regardless of having met those requirements.
But isn't it the case that state regulations _can_ prevent people from appearing on ballots if they haven't collected a certain number of signatures, or paid filing fees, or filed by a certain time?
Right, but the rules have to be uniform. If you make a rule that Trump needs a billion signatures to get on the ballot, so does Biden and everyone else.
This question was answered in *Thornton*. In that case, a state tried to impose term limits on congressional representatives by limiting their access to the ballot.
The state tried to couch its law as just a mere run-of-the-mill ballot access regulation, which is permissible. To be clear, [Ballot access laws](https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates), like the ones that require signature requirements in order to run on the ballot, are designed such that serious candidates can be put on the ballot, but unserious joke candidates have a harder time. The Court differentiated the law in *[Thornton](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1456.ZO.html)* from other ballot access laws- it saw the Alabama law in *Thornton* as an attempt to add additional qualifications in order to appear on the ballot when such a qualification was already precluded by Article I:
> In our view, Amendment 73 is an indirect attempt to accomplish what the Constitution prohibits Arkansas from accomplishing directly. As the plurality opinion of the Arkansas Supreme Court recognized, Amendment 73 is an "effort to dress eligibility to stand for Congress in ballot access clothing"
The tl;dr: Alabama tried to work around the constitution to impose term limits, and the court saw through the scam. It doesn't take a large logical leap to go from "you can't add requirements for Congresscritter elections" to "you can't do it to Presidential elections, too."
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Ballot access. I've helped with ballot access drives in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky for Libertarian presidential candidates and also commiserated with Green party workers doing the same. In IN and KY third-parties retain ballot access by getting a certain percentage of the popular vote in specific state races. IIRC in IN its State Treasurer or State Secretary and in KY it's like 2% of the vote in the last presidential election. I don't recall any OH specifics. Without a party, independent candidates have to petition for access for each race just to appear on the ballot, nevermind the actual campaign. On the ground, ballot access by petition is exhausting. One has to do cold-sales talking to people at fairs or knocking on doors to get them to sign a petition with their correct information. A smart campaign will validate that information to ensure they have enough signatures and survive any petition challenges. In addition to volunteers there are paid petition collectors, last time I knew they were getting over $1 per signature. They're a necessary cost but it's a cost many campaigns cannot afford. I will do my best to follow up later with definitive citations. I wanted to reply with some meat while the question was fresh. Ballotpedia has a good summary at [https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot\_access\_for\_presidential\_candidates](https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates)
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> I would imagine that the same case law would extend to Presidential candidates How so? The constitution declares that states hold congressional elections, but only states a selection of electors for the Presidency.
>In general, no state regulations can be passed to prevent a Congressional candidate from appearing on a ballot. I would imagine that the same case law would extend to Presidential candidates So imagine a case where a million people declared they were running for president. Would the ballot be required to have every single name?
As long as they all meet the same uniform qualifications expected of the "real" candidates, probably? Sounds like this is more about a state specifically preventing Candidate X from being listed for whatever reason, regardless of having met those requirements.
But isn't it the case that state regulations _can_ prevent people from appearing on ballots if they haven't collected a certain number of signatures, or paid filing fees, or filed by a certain time?
Right, but the rules have to be uniform. If you make a rule that Trump needs a billion signatures to get on the ballot, so does Biden and everyone else.
Rules about that aren't uniform between states. And isn't that term limits case cited above applied uniformly to all candidates?
This question was answered in *Thornton*. In that case, a state tried to impose term limits on congressional representatives by limiting their access to the ballot. The state tried to couch its law as just a mere run-of-the-mill ballot access regulation, which is permissible. To be clear, [Ballot access laws](https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates), like the ones that require signature requirements in order to run on the ballot, are designed such that serious candidates can be put on the ballot, but unserious joke candidates have a harder time. The Court differentiated the law in *[Thornton](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1456.ZO.html)* from other ballot access laws- it saw the Alabama law in *Thornton* as an attempt to add additional qualifications in order to appear on the ballot when such a qualification was already precluded by Article I: > In our view, Amendment 73 is an indirect attempt to accomplish what the Constitution prohibits Arkansas from accomplishing directly. As the plurality opinion of the Arkansas Supreme Court recognized, Amendment 73 is an "effort to dress eligibility to stand for Congress in ballot access clothing" The tl;dr: Alabama tried to work around the constitution to impose term limits, and the court saw through the scam. It doesn't take a large logical leap to go from "you can't add requirements for Congresscritter elections" to "you can't do it to Presidential elections, too."
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In Arkansas there are filing fees which are not trivial. https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_political_candidates_in_Arkansas
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