$10,400 for the opportunity to run for public office.
Isn’t that like a Poll Tax of sorts?
I can’t imagine why any entry fee should be more than $25. Someone ‘splain it to me, please.
I don’t know about SC specifically, but I believe that most States allow for a ‘fee in lieu of petition’. You can submit petitions to file for free (showing that you have a minimum base of support), or you can pay the fee. In either case, you have, to quote our illustrious pResident, “Skin in the game.” That puts up a minimum bar to keep from having 1,000 names on the primary ballot.
If you are running for U.S. Senate, and you can’t afford $10,400, then you aren’t series about running for Senate.
I paid $3,125 to run for Congress in TX (lost the primary). I could have provided a petition of 500 Republican primary voters instead. Sounds easy. Except. If you have 10 seconds to spend with a potential voter, you don’t want to waste that time talking about the legalize of signing a petition.
Besides, nobody goes through your cash to see which dollars they can get disqualified.
Really. I spent tens of thousands of dollars (much of it my own money) and a year of my life running for Congress. $3,125 is NOT why I didn’t win and wasn’t a serious bar to entry considering all the other costs - money, time, and otherwise - to run.
Isn’t that like a Poll Tax of sorts?
"A poll tax is a discriminatory tax that is a pre-condition of the exercise of the ability to vote." - Wikipedia
I don't know about the legal issues surrounding this, but it seems to me that if there was not some sort of fee to run for public office, many people might register on a whim, resulting in large extra costs to the state for printing ballots and voter pamphlets.
I noticed in an earlier article that Greene paid the fee at the Democrat Party office, so perhaps they got some of it.