Crazy Early Filing Period Clamps Down on Voter Choice

The filing period for party candidates to run for public office begins tomorrow, November 4th 2019 and ends about a week later. Traditionally, the filing period isn't normally until March of the election year. Why is the filing period so early?

The state legislature says they want to align with "Super Tuesday" in the Republican Presidential Primary. This professed goal is ridiculous on its face, since Arkansas is still too late to be a momentum-builder state like Iowa and New Hampshire, and will always have a small part of the total delegate pie. We won't ever have a major role in picking the Republican nominee, especially this time. Unless of course the GOP establishment has some secret plan to flip on Trump and remove him from office after impeachment.

I think the larger reason for the early filings is referenced in the article. The incumbents in the dominant party in the state want less competition! From the link: “Early filing period always makes it harder for candidate recruitment,” said Democratic Party of Arkansas Chairman Michael John Gray. “People feel like they just came out of an election.”

It isn't like there is a surplus of choice for the voters. The piece also notes" " In last year’s midterms, 47 out of 118 state legislative races (exactly 40%) fielded candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties, the most since 2012." So the most competition in years features only 47 out of 118 races where the two major parties face off. And it is liable to be worse than that in 2020 because the early filing period is reducing the number of candidates.

I realize there are a lot of people in this state who are happy to have a one party system. Some of them may even deserve to be well governed, but others don't. A lack of competition, especially when competition is reduced by law as is the effect here, is unhealthy for a free society.

You may think it is OK because the utterly corrupt and dysfunctional Democrat Party is getting the worst of it here, but that's not true. Outsider groups who want to mount primary challenges to establishment Republicans are hurt by this rule. Libertarians are hurt by it. Independents are in particular hurt by it. There is no good reason why an Independent should be required to file for office a year before the election just because the leading party in the state decided that was the best time for them to file!