The process seems good to me. If you can’t find 50 volunteers to collect 200 signatures each how much chance did you really have to win in that state anyway? You can’t will yourself onto the ballot. You need to demonstrate a viable campaign and signatures are a very fair way of doing that, more fair than having to pay to get on.
We debate that regularly. The opposing view is that the signatures rarely indicate support, they just indicate you had money to hire someone who could collect signatures. People sign petitions just to be done with it. I collected signatures for multiple candidates in 2008, and signed for many of the candidates.
There have been suggestions to use donations as an alternative — show you have $100,000 in hard-money donations from the state, and you are on the ballot. Or let people pay to get on the ballot.
I don’t know. If someone paid me $10,000, I’m sure I could have gotten them 1000 signatures from my district. But I would be surprised if my district was a problem for any candidate, we are solid republican and it’s easy to get signatures.