Congress tries to kill off third parties

From LP headquarters, this is just in:

On February 1, congressional Democrats, led by Rep. Obey of Wisconsin, introduced a bill, H.R. 4694, that would end viable, third-party competition in races for the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill, ironically named the "Let the People Decide Clean Campaign Act," would mandate public funds (taken from the U.S. Treasury) to candidates for the House of Representatives and forbid candidates from taking private funds such as contributions from individual donors.

The ambiguously-written bill provides funds for candidates of the "two major parties" but essentially scuttles any campaign efforts of third-party or independent candidates.

For third-party candidates to be eligible for the same funds that Republicans and Democrats would receive, they would have to obtain enough signatures to exceed 20% of votes cast in the last election within their district.

The catch under the proposed legislation is that third-party or independent candidates cannot pay petitioners to collect any signatures, making it impossible to fund their campaigns.

The Congresscritters are running scared. Not scared so much that we'll get elected, but scared that we can throw them out of power by spoiling an election, like we did to drug warrior Bob Barr and all-around statist asshole Tom Daschle. They're hoping that this will shut us up for good... pray this doesn't pass, or we lose one of the chief ways we currently possess to keep the bastards accountable to the people.