If Liz were Queen

Independent: “Oh listen dear, they are playing our song–The Jim Crow Rag.”
It is hyperbole for me to compare my plight as a white women running as an independent candidate for the Third US Congressional District of Texas to that of Black people who for years faced horrible discrimination that included threats of bodily harm that in fact were often carried out if they dared to even attempt to register to vote, much less vote or run for office.  But as I learn of all the “special” requirements for an independent candidate, the extra hoops that we must jump through just to get our names on the ballot in November, I imagine that I know a tiny part of the humiliation that people must have felt when they had the Jim Crow laws thrown in their faces.

To put the discrimination against independent candidates into perspective:  according to WIKI, 30% of American voters say that they are Independents–almost 1/3 of all the voters.

Yet  independent candidates are treated as second class citizens in our “democracy.”  Independents face hurdles that candidates from the two main parties never have to consider and we are enormously handicapped from the very beginning of the process.

Knowing what I know now, I am absolutely thrilled that I have the opportunity to appear at the forum this Saturday February 13 in Plano Texas that is sponsored by the Women League of Voters–a rare opportunity for me to appear on the same stage as the other three “official” candidates.

And in grudging fairness, I suppose if the ruling class of Democrats and Republicans didn’t make it so difficult for the riffraff to get on the ballot, the state would go broke just getting all the names posted.

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THE THREE BIG STRIKES AGAINST INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES

STRIKE ONE: Primaries exclude independents from the crucial first round of voting. That’s correct.  You will not see my name “Emma Berry” on any primary ballot.

STRIKE TWO: Discriminatory ballot access requirements  are heavily biased against independent and third-party candidates.  For example, in the state of Texas, in order for me to get my name on the ballot, I will need to get the names, addresses, signatures, voter registration numbers of 500 voters in my district.  None of these people can have voted in the primary. If they have, they will not be eligible to sign my petition.  I cannot begin to gather these signatures until after the primary in March, and I will have to turn the signed, notarized documents into the Secretary of the State of Texas no later than

STRIKE THREE: Independents are just that–independent.  We are out there all alone.  We do not have funds from a party from which we can draw.  We don’t have big name politicians celebrity endorsements.  Rather than Independents, a better name for us would be Ordinary Citizen Candidates.