Political barriers

The nation's two major political parties go to great lengths to preserve their monopoly status. Among their favorite tactics: limiting the participation of third-party candidates in national debates and burdensome state laws that make ballot access difficult for those other than Republicans and Democrats.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court took a small step that might help break up their party.

Last year, Ralph Nader embarked upon a presidential bid as an independent. As part of his effort to get his name on ballots across the country, he sued Arizona over its requirement that those seeking to gather signatures to qualify Mr. Nader for the ballot there had to be eligible to vote in the state.

The law made it even more difficult for Mr. Nader to crack Arizona's major-party monopoly -- and even more expensive -- because he couldn't bring in out-of-state volunteers to help him circulate the required petitions.

Mr. Nader argued that the Arizona statute -- and another regulation that imposed different deadlines for independent candidates to qualify for the ballot than it did for Republicans and Democrats -- interfered with his free speech rights.

Last year the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, and this week the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn that decision.

The 9th Circuit ruling is consistent with another decision last year out of Oklahoma that also highlighted how far the political class will go to preserve its grasp on power.

In that case, Oklahoma's attorney general had brought criminal charges against three people who were part of an effort to put a ballot question before that state's voters seeking limits on government spending and growth.

Oklahoma officials said the three petition circulators broke a 1969 state law requiring that they be residents.

The attorney general dropped his heavy-handed prosecution only after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out the law in question as unconstitutional.

In both the Arizona and Oklahoma cases, the political establishment opted to ignore the First Amendment in favor of barriers purposely constructed to make it difficult to challenge the status quo. That federal judges refused to tolerate such anti-democratic nonsense is a good thing, indeed.