Ballot Access, Public Funding of Candidates, and Candidate Emergence in Gubernatorial Elections.

The lack of competition that plagues elections in the United States at all levels of government has been both widely lamented and widely studied. Yet, given the strategic advantages electoral incumbents enjoy, it is not surprising that they are frequently able to skate through an election unopposed or with only token opposition. One aspect of the candidate emergence process that has been largely overlooked up to this point, however, are the effects certain electoral laws, such as ballot access requirements and public funding of candidates, have on candidate emergence. Following the "strategic politicians" model of candidate entry (Black 1972; Jacobson and Kernell 1981), we propose that such electoral laws are properly considered part of the cost ("C") term in the standard decision-making calculus of potential candidates. Specifically, ballot access requirements add to the costs a potential candidate faces, while public funding of candidates has the ability to alleviate some of the costs associated with becoming a candidate. Using gubernatorial election data from 1980-2005, we empirically test whether ballot access (both petition and filing fee) requirements and public funding of candidates have these proposed effects on the candidate emergence process. The results provide mixed support for our claims. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]