Yes, but the parties allegedly have used the legal system to harm other candidates' efforts at ballot access:
> In 2004, Democratic operatives were especially zealous in their efforts against my campaign. They hired private investigators to harass my campaign’s petition circulators in their homes in Ohio and Oregon and falsely threatened them with criminal prosecution for fake names that saboteurs had signed on their petitions, according to sworn affidavits from the workers and letters containing threats that were presented in court. Our petitions were also disqualified on arbitrary grounds: In Ohio, complaints submitted in court and to the office of the Secretary of State by groups of Democratic voters led officials there to invalidate our petitions. They disqualified hundreds of signatures on one list, for instance, because of a discrepancy involving the petition circulator’s signature. In Oregon, Democratic Secretary of State Bill Bradbury retroactively applied certain rules in a way that suddenly rendered our previously compliant petitions invalid.
> Democrats and their allies (some later reimbursed by the DNC, according to both campaign finance reports and a party official in Maine who testified under oath) enlisted more than 90 lawyers from more than 50 law firms to file 29 complaints against my campaign in 18 states and with the Federal Election Commission for the express purpose of using the cost and delay of litigation to drain our resources. “We wanted to neutralize his campaign by forcing him to spend money and resources defending these things,” operative Toby Moffett told The Washington Post in 2004.
> Democrats falsely accused my campaign of fraud in state after state. In Pennsylvania, they forced us off the ballot after challenging more than 30,000 signatures on spurious technical grounds. My running mate, Peter Camejo, and I were ordered to pay more than $81,000 in litigation costs the plaintiffs, a group of Democratic voters, said they incurred. In an effort to collect, their law firm, Reed Smith ,which the DNC also hired in that cycle, froze my personal accounts at several banks for eight years. A criminal prosecution by the state attorney general later revealed that Pennsylvania House Democrats had, illegally at taxpayer expense, prepared the complaints against our campaign, and several people were convicted of related felonies. A federal court in Pennsylvania ultimately struck down the state law used against me that had led to the order that I pay the litigation costs. But Reed Smith was still allowed to keep $34,000 it withdrew from my accounts, because state courts wouldn’t let me present evidence that could have permitted me to recover the money.
I think 'legal monopoly' implies that there is some legal ruling which enforces the monopoly. You said yourself that what they are doing is an abuse. Just because it involves lawyers doesn't make it 'legal'.
But ultimately the fact that there are independents on ballot papers proves clearly that there is no monopoly, legal or otherwise, by any definition at all.
That may be clear to you, but to others the fact that the legal system was utilized to leverage the existing parties' power over smaller parties' ability to reach voters is what indicates a legal monopoly.
Besides all that, I don't understand how you say there wasn't a legal ruling which enforced the monopoly, when I just presented several examples in which there were.
You and I must simply have different understanding of the word monopoly and what it means to legally enforce one, so I guess we're not going to convince each other.
Gary Johnson is standing in fifty states isn't he? He's not doing that illegally is he? So there is no monopoly. If there is then it's not being enforced, legally or illegally.
I didn't claim there was a monopoly this year, though, did I. In fact the GOP establishment would want Johnson to stand in 50 states as many of them oppose Trump and resent that he has taken over their party.
Some would call that a straw man argument: establishing a fact I never disputed.
On the other hand, there is evidence presented above that that occurred in previous elections (2004, 2000).
I don't agree with that. What I agree with is 'they shouldn't' and 'this year they haven't exercised the option that they have to do so'. As I said earlier, Johnson poses no threat to the GOP, and Stein isn't seen as a significant threat (and isn't).
> In 2004, Democratic operatives were especially zealous in their efforts against my campaign. They hired private investigators to harass my campaign’s petition circulators in their homes in Ohio and Oregon and falsely threatened them with criminal prosecution for fake names that saboteurs had signed on their petitions, according to sworn affidavits from the workers and letters containing threats that were presented in court. Our petitions were also disqualified on arbitrary grounds: In Ohio, complaints submitted in court and to the office of the Secretary of State by groups of Democratic voters led officials there to invalidate our petitions. They disqualified hundreds of signatures on one list, for instance, because of a discrepancy involving the petition circulator’s signature. In Oregon, Democratic Secretary of State Bill Bradbury retroactively applied certain rules in a way that suddenly rendered our previously compliant petitions invalid.
> Democrats and their allies (some later reimbursed by the DNC, according to both campaign finance reports and a party official in Maine who testified under oath) enlisted more than 90 lawyers from more than 50 law firms to file 29 complaints against my campaign in 18 states and with the Federal Election Commission for the express purpose of using the cost and delay of litigation to drain our resources. “We wanted to neutralize his campaign by forcing him to spend money and resources defending these things,” operative Toby Moffett told The Washington Post in 2004.
> Democrats falsely accused my campaign of fraud in state after state. In Pennsylvania, they forced us off the ballot after challenging more than 30,000 signatures on spurious technical grounds. My running mate, Peter Camejo, and I were ordered to pay more than $81,000 in litigation costs the plaintiffs, a group of Democratic voters, said they incurred. In an effort to collect, their law firm, Reed Smith ,which the DNC also hired in that cycle, froze my personal accounts at several banks for eight years. A criminal prosecution by the state attorney general later revealed that Pennsylvania House Democrats had, illegally at taxpayer expense, prepared the complaints against our campaign, and several people were convicted of related felonies. A federal court in Pennsylvania ultimately struck down the state law used against me that had led to the order that I pay the litigation costs. But Reed Smith was still allowed to keep $34,000 it withdrew from my accounts, because state courts wouldn’t let me present evidence that could have permitted me to recover the money.
By Ralph Nader https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/25/...