In North Carolina’s Lincoln Tribune, Sara Burrows reports on the efforts of one unaffiliated candidate for State House, Mark Brody, in his fight against the ballot access regime constructed to protect the Democratic-Republican two-party state and duopoly system of government:

Unaffiliated congressional candidate Mark Brody is suing the state over what he calls unfair and unconstitutional ballot access laws. After collecting the 3,000 signatures it took to appear on the 2008 ballot, Mark Brody ran as an unaffiliated candidate for North Carolina House District 103. He earned 30 percent of the vote. Brody assumed his high numbers at the polls would secure him an automatic place on the ballot in 2010. He was wrong. When he went to his County Board of Elections last month to file for office, he was turned away. The board said if he wanted to get back on the ballot he had to petition all over again. He has until June to turn in the signatures. Brody refuses to petition again. He says doing so would lend legitimacy to what he calls an unjust and incomplete election law. . . .

Republicans and Democrats don’t have to collect signatures giving them permission to run again, no matter how poorly they do in a given election, he said. “If the Libertarians can stay on with 2 percent of the vote, then why the heck can’t I stay on with 30 percent?” Brody asked. . . . Other than a candidate for district attorney in 2008, Brody is the only unaffiliated candidate to make it on North Carolina’s ballot in 105 years. . . . Brody calls himself a constitutional conservative. When asked why he wouldn’t run as a Republican or Libertarian, he said neither party represented him.