Opening the Ballot in North Carolina

I could hardly believe my eyes this morning as I perused The Chronicle, Duke's daily which bills itself as "The Tower of Campus Thought and Action" or some such drivel. Buried inside was some real reporting, regarding efforts by North Carolina's Libertarian and Green Parties to liberalize state ballot laws, currently among the nation's strictest. The present requirement to collect 70,000 votes in order to qualify obviously discriminates against such small parties, which usually spend the majority of their respective budgets in the process. Now, however, the Greens and Libertarians have laid their ideological differences aside in an attempt to overturn the law.

First, I was flabbergasted by such reporting in the Chronicle; more often than not, I feel that the thing should come in two ply on a roll because that's about the limit of its value. Second, and this isn't always the case, I like the idea. It's not out of any ideological willingness to see third (and fourth) parties compete in the general - it's bad enough having Ron Paul in the debates without having Cynthia McKinney in there. Rather, it's because of the Libertarian Party's gubernatorial candidate Mike Munger.

Munger, the Political Science Department Chair here at Duke, has a well-deserved and legendary reputation. He's also inarguably brilliant. He almost certainly wouldn't win election - he's too smart for that (a sad testament to our political system) - but I'd love nothing than to see him get into the gubernatorial debates. This isn't to say the others are dunces, indeed by Tarheel State standards, they're not a bad lot (Wake Forest grads, one graduate degree from LSE). But Mungowitz is a) brilliant and b) absolutely without regard for political convention. Thus the debates would quickly become must-see TV (and I might not be joking had the writers strike recently ended). Oh and Munger's an enormously amusing blogger. Check him out.

I won't cry if he and his greenie counterpart don't make the ballot - but I do think North Carolina politics will be the worse for it.