A lot of people have been bitching about the fact that the Minneapolis mayoral race had 35 candidates. Yes, people were whining because there were too many choices on the ballot. The only reason one would complain about such a thing is because they felt the additional choices would take away votes from their preferred candidate, which is bullshit.
But I decided to do a little kitchen match and see exactly how much of the eligible population of Minneapolis appeared on the ballot. To perform this feat I discovered that the United States Census Bureau is good for something. Here are the democraphic numbers I used to come up with my results.
The population of Minneapolis is approximately 392,880. Of that population approximately 313,518 are 18 years or older. Out of a candidate pool of approximately 313,518 we only had 35 filings at the nominal rate of $20.00. That means that only .01116363335 percent of the eligible population filed.
Even with a filing fee as low as $20.00 only one percent of one percent of eligible people are willing to run for mayor in Minneapolis. I think a vast majority of the people living there realize the position or mayor is pointless or, at least, more pointless than their current positions in life. The problem of “joke” candidates doesn’t seem to be too big of an issue. But that doesn’t matter, somebody besides Republican and Democratic candidates are appearing on the ballot and that means the game has to be rigged:
Less than 24 hours after Minneapolis voters finished hacking through a 35-candidate ballot, the Charter Commission voted unanimously to raise the entry fee from $20 to $500, matching St. Paul’s.
The lower fee, in place for at least 40 years — according to commissioner Lyall Schwarzkopf, who remembered it from when he was city clerk in 1972 — had enabled candidates, in the absence of a primary, to make “a mockery” of recent mayoral elections, said Commissioner Devin Rice.
Making a mockery of the mayoral race? I’m glad somebody is giving the position the respect it deserves. More importantly a mere one percent of one percent of eligible individuals were willing to pay the $20.00 fee required to even mock the position in such a public way. But this has nothing to do with people mocking the position of mayor. The power players are merely upset that the serfs are getting on the ballot. Higher ups in both the Democratic and Republican parties want to have a duopoly on ballots. While they want to allow a nominal number of third party candidates on the ballot to cover up the oligarchy they’ve established, they don’t want more than a handful. Politicians are monopolists after all, they don’t want actual competition.