No More 48-Candidate Races

A surplus of candidates can ruin any political campaign, and it’s happened twice in recent groundbreaking elections in Cascadia. Fortunately, neighboring jurisdictions have demonstrated the solution to this problem: raise filing fees. 

Alaska and Portland each recently debuted a new, much-anticipated ranked choice voting method. In both places, the trouble was that putting your name on the ballot was so easy (costing less than a tank of gas for a Ford F-150) that the elections were flooded with candidates. 

The result, in both Alaska and Portland, was an inaugural campaign that tried voters’ patience with teeming lists of candidates, many of them narcissistic dreamers with no intention of campaigning, no support from key constituencies, and no chance of winning. 

One fix to this surplus is simple: charge candidates a filing fee large enough to dissuade dilettantes without deterring contenders. Montana, Alaska’s closest cousin among the states, and Portland’s urban counterparts in neighboring Washington charge filing fees more than ten times as high. That’s why these Cascadian jurisdictions do not attract candidates like fishing derbies draw anglers. 

Case Study: Alaska’s 2022 US House seat race 

Alaska’s 2022 inaugural election was run under its top-four law. In top-four, voters choose four finalists in a primary election and then pick among them in a ranked choice voting general election. Voters for an open US House seat confronted a ballot overloaded with 48 candidates (pictured below). The state’s new election plan was supposed to make things better; instead, voters got a ballot as daunting as The Cheesecake Factory’s menu. 

This race was a special election for the state’s sole US House seat, unexpectedly vacated by the death of Rep. Don Young after 49 years in office. The absence of an incumbent and the novelty of the new rules recruited a bumper crop of candidates, and the nominal filing fee of just $100 did nothing to separate the chaff from the grain. For one Benjamin Franklin, you could get your name on every ballot and in every voters’ guide in the state and—who knows?—maybe your candidacy would catch fire. 

However, most did not catch even a spark, and few candidates raised money or ran actual campaigns. Just one-fifth of candidates cracked 2 percent of the vote, as shown in the figure below. At the bottom of the pack, some 19 candidates won fewer than 100 votes each. 

Case study: Portland’s 2024 city council election 

The same pattern emerged in Portland. The city ’s 2024 election was the inaugural run of its new election system, which uses a single round of ranked choice voting for all races. Some 118 candidates surged into municipal contests. City Council Districts 3 and 4 each had 30 candidates for their three seats. (See sample ballots below.) Such races make voting a morass and campaigning a Black Friday crowd scene. At some debates, each candidate got speaking time measured in seconds. 

In the end, as in Alaska, voters ignored most candidates. In District 4, for example, only 11 voters picked L Christopher Regis. He had enough support to field a kickball team in one of Portland’s adult co-ed leagues but fell 11,251 votes short of winning a council seat. Regis was not alone. In Districts 3 and 4 combined, only a quarter of candidates crossed the 2 percent threshold, as shown in the figure below. Most of the also-rans did not actually run. They just made the process of voting feel like scrolling through the dross on Netflix. 

 

The sudden opening of every elected office in the city, all at the same time, brought the crush of candidates. Empty chairs attract aspirants. What’s more, excitement about the new system itself drew participation, making more candidates believe they could compete. But the fact that securing a spot on the ballot cost nothing but $75 for council or $100 for mayor amplified the gold rush spirit. 

Low filing fees for open seats elsewhere have also attracted swollen fields of candidates. In 2003, for example, a special election recalled the sitting governor of California, Gray Davis, and voters’ plurality winner of a pick-one election on the same ballot became his successor. More than 100 candidates paid the modest fee to be listed on that ballot, and fame alone was enough to propel celebrity Arnold Schwarzenegger into the governor’s mansion. 

A better approach 

Charge a fair price of admission 

The antidote to overcrowded ballots is a filing fee large enough to filter out posers. Filing for office in Montana and Washington, for instance, costs enough to make you think twice, as shown in the figure below and detailed in the datasheet linked below. In Washington, a candidate pays 1 percent of the position’s annual salary.¹ To run for governor in 2024, for example, a campaign would have paid $2,042. 

 
 
This policy means that whereas filing to run for city council in Portland costs only $75 (plus $300 if you want to publish a statement in the voters’ pamphlet), it costs $1,446 in Seattle (voters’ guide statement included). No wonder Portland’s recent campaign season was like a Friday night queue at Voodoo Donuts. 

In the case of Alaska’s race for US Representative, meanwhile, the disparity with Montana is even more jarring. Each of the 48 candidates in Alaska in 2022 had to come up with only $100. Compare that with Montana, where the fee to run for Congress is $1,740—more than 17 times as much. 

Academic research testifies to the efficacy of ballot-qualification barriers that are more than nominal. Even requiring a modest fee, such as Montana or Washington’s, or a modest batch of signatures, can filter pretenders out of a field. Minneapolis raised its filing fee in 2014 from $20 to $500 after switching to ranked choice voting and enduring a 35-candidate race for an open mayoral seat. After $500 fees were implemented, the next field was less than half as large, at 15 candidates—still large but no longer an absurdity. 

Or require more signatures 

To some, substantial filing fees seem plutocratic, favoring the rich and well connected. These critics prefer requiring candidates to demonstrate support by submitting signatures from local voters. 

Fair enough. That’s a good alternative. Still, the fact is that almost everywhere in the Northwest, if you don’t want to pay the fee, you can collect a set number of signatures instead. In Washington, you can submit the same number of signatures from registered voters as dollars in the fee: in place of $2,042 for governor, you can collect signatures from 2,042 registered Washington voters. 

In practice, though, almost no one submits signatures. Only one of the 118 candidates in Portland last year, Rex Burkholder, qualified by gathering signatures, and he did it as a campaign tactic. 

Political signatures are now a commodity business in Cascadia, and paid petition circulators collect almost all the signatures needed to qualify citizens’ initiative for the ballot. Campaigns pay much more than $1 per signature, though; indeed, they typically spend $8 to $20 per signature. For candidates everywhere in Cascadia, therefore, it’s much cheaper to pay filing fees than to gather signatures. 

Jurisdictions could certainly insist on signatures instead of fees, as some states outside the Northwest do and as Washington does for presidential candidates. But in reality almost no candidates themselves collect the requisite signatures. It’s much easier to raise the money and pay signature gatherers, so ballot qualification will still be a financial test in the end. What’s more, signatures need to be verified by local election officials, increasing the cost of local elections. Filing fees, in contrast, are simple to administer and help cover election expenses. 

Montana and Washington show these solutions in action 

Are Montana and Washington’s fees too high? Do they squelch democracy and suppress choice? Not at all. For serious candidates who intend to compete, these fees are trifling. In contested races, candidates will have to raise hundreds of times more money. Washington governor Bob Ferguson raised more than $14 million for his 2024 campaign; the $2,042 filing fee was penny ante. 

Indeed, though Montana and Washington see fewer candidates than Alaska and Oregon, even Montana and Washington’s fees are lower than they might be. They are low enough that at least one entrepreneur became a perennial candidate in Washington, filing for office every year as a cheap way to advertise his moving business. In fact, he legally changed his name to Mike the Mover, and it appeared on millions of ballots and in voters’ pamphlets. 

For context, US states impose a wide range of fees, and 1 percent is common. Florida’s fees are higher, at 4–6 percent. The leading American scholar of candidate qualification, Richard Winger of Ballot Access News, recommends that states require presidential candidates to submit 5,000 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. At today’s signature-gathering prices, that works out as equivalent to a filing fee of 10–25 percent of the office’s salary!² 

Compared with Winger’s recommendation, a 1 percent fee is piddling and all the more reason for Alaska and Portland to raise their filing fee at least that high. This would allow them to guard against dilettantes. 

A (small) party boost 

A 1 percent fee may also be a boon to political parties. By imposing a modest barrier to entry, filing fees like Washington’s encourage would-be candidates to do their homework before committing to a race. Contenders may, for example, then begin the arduous process of consulting with party leaders and organizations, courting constituency groups, and wooing prospective supporters. 

This fee increase may also give parties a little leverage over who represents them on the ballot. They can offer to pay the fees for the candidates they nominate; at party conventions, they can inexpensively gather signatures to qualify their candidates. 

Of course, fees such as Montana’s and Washington’s will not restore polarized political parties to health. Raised fees will have only modest effects, but even modest effects count. Stronger parties would ease governance in Cascadia. However much voters may disparage them, political parties are the essential intermediaries of democracies everywhere. They aggregate like-minded voters, assemble coalitions that can win, mediate disputes among coalition factions, articulate visions and platforms, hold leaders accountable, and serve as shorthand identifiers on the ballot for time-strapped voters. Indeed, party identification is so valuable that in its absence, many voters extrapolate from unreliable markers such as candidates’ genders or surnames to try to divine alignment with their values. 

At present, America’s parties are weak. Their popularity is almost entirely in the negative; their voters hate the other party more than they love their own. Rebuilding parties is a long-term project—and ultimately, we need more of them, plus proportional representation—but strengthening them ought to be an ancillary objective in other election upgrades. And giving parties a role in helping to choose candidates for the ballot would help. 

No more laundry lists 

Alaska’s top-four election model and Portland’s proportional ranked choice voting model—gold standards for a better democracy—make Cascadia proud. Replicating them elsewhere would lessen many of America’s political shortcomings, from gridlock to polarization, from gerrymandering to presidential authoritarianism. To win replication, though, Alaska and Portland need to function better by no longer attracting 48 candidates for US Representative or 30 for city council. 

But before replication will gain speed, the systems themselves need perfecting. That’s why fixing even the smallest flaws in these model election systems is essential. Matching Montana’s and Washington’s filing fees is a first step toward that end, toward sifting the grain from the chaff. 

Commendably, Portland election officials have already expressed initial curiosity about raising the city’s fees. Following through in the Rose City, and then following suit in Alaska, would be a win for voters, serious candidates, and election officials. And it wouldn’t be bad for parties either. 

The only ones who would lose would be the political dabblers who want their names on the ballot without having to work for it. 

(UPDATE, 11/12/2025: The city of Portland is requesting comments on a proposal to raise filing fees to $250 for council and $500 for mayor—better but still too low. You can comment here.)

Thanks to Sightline Fellow Todd Newman for data gathering and analysis.