I have been thinking a lot about Judge Underhill's decision on Thursday where he ruled that the Citizens' Election Program was unconstitutional. Part his reasoning was "that the CEP is not narrowly tailored to achieving the state’s compelling interests because the state has failed to demonstrate how the public fisc is actually protected by imposing stringent qualifying criteria on minor party candidates, while permitting equally hopeless major party candidates to qualify under significantly less onerous qualifying criteria, in vastly greater numbers and at windfall funding levels."

The idea of "hopeless candidacies" particularly jumped out at me. What is the hope of candidates running for office? What is the state's interest in candidates running for office? It seems as if Judge Underhill makes a common mistake. He talks about hopelessness in terms of "electoral success". Clearly, it is in the states interest to promote competition between those most likely to succeed in terms of their probability of electoral success. However, I believe that this is looking at the electoral process way too narrowly.

I know many candidates, my wife included, who have run for state office and not been elected; who have had their campaigns labeled hopeless. However, there is a much greater hope of many candidates than simply getting elected. Candidates hope to promote involvement in the electoral process and discussions about the policies that effect the state. My wife ran as a Democrat in a district that has not elected a Democrat in nearly a century and where the Democrats had not even fielded a candidate in several election cycles. I believe that by Judge Underhill's criteria, such a campaign would have been labeled hopeless. While my wife's candidacy did not achieve electoral success, it was extremely successful in promoting involvement in the electoral process and discussions about the policies that effect the state.

I have often argued that the Citizens' Election Program should be best compared to our education budgets. Whether you are talking about fifteen million dollars during election cycles with just state legislators or fifty million dollars during elections cycles with constitutional officers, this is a small amount to pay for the education of voters on the issues, especially when compared to the education budgets of the towns and cities of Connecticut.

Yet there is a common concern between education in our public schools and education in our public elections. The state does have a keen interest in making sure that the educators, whether they be school teachers, or candidates, are most likely to succeed in their tasks.

While it may seem unfair, major party candidates, no matter how likely they are to get elected have a greater probability of promoting involvement in the electoral process and discussions about the policies that effect the state. Minor party candidates do not have that greater probability and need to be able to demonstrate that they can have an effect on electoral involvement, independent of their probability of electoral success. The mechanisms to assess this ability, based on percentage of votes for candidates of the minor party in the previous election, or the number of signatures gathered seems like a highly reasonable method for the state to determine the likely success of the candidates in promoting involvement in the electoral process and discussions about the policies that effect the state.