Georgia’s third-party candidates struggle for ballot access; local independents feel impacts acutely 

Papers are scattered across the desk. Two cellphones sit to the side. Both details offer a glimpse into the many hats Rachel Thompson wears in Glynn County. 

“I was only supposed to be here for nine months, but everything just kept me here. All my jobs kept me here, and I kind of just grew to love our coastal ecosystems and the community,” said Thompson. 

The 36-year-old nonprofit leader has spent the past seven months juggling her duties as director of the Glynn Environmental Coalition and wearing out shoe leather in an attempt to become an independent candidate for the Glynn County District 4 School Board seat.

Yet Georgia’s hurdles for candidates unaffiliated with a major political party to appear on a ballot were too steep for her to surpass. Thompson carefully gathered hundreds of petition signatures to appear on the ballot, but her bid was denied after Glynn County Superior Court Judge Stephen Kelley determined she fell one signature short of the law. 

Of Georgia’s estimated 8.2 million voters, more than 2 million identify as independents or nonpartisan, representing 28% of the voting bloc, according to the Independent Voter Project, a California-based nonprofit that analyzes voter data. Nationwide, that figure could be as high as 45%. Yet in the Peach State, candidates who also see their values outside party structures find it nearly impossible to get traction. 

“Everybody’s trying to figure out how to save democracy, and the best way to save democracy is by doing democracy, and that’s what this person in Glynn County is doing,” said Cara McCormick from the Independent Voter Project. 

Third party challenges in Georgia

While voters are trending independent, Georgia laws dating back to the 1940s keep third-party candidates and independents from gaining influence. A Mercer University Law Review paper described them as among the harshest in the nation. 

Candidates from parties that failed to garner 20% in the last major election, such as the Libertarian or Green Party, and independents hoping to stand for non-statewide races must collect signatures from 5% of registered voters in their district to qualify for the general election ballot.

For statewide positions such as governor or president, candidates must collect signatures from 1% of voters.

The signature requirement has been challenged multiple times over the decades. 

In 2017, the Libertarian Party of Georgia filed a lawsuit arguing that the signature requirement for independent candidates for U.S. House of Representatives races was unconstitutional. That case was filed on behalf of Martin Cowen, who was running for the 13th Congressional District seat.  A year later, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision.

Independents on the coast

In local Coastal Georgia races, the signature requirement has been a hurdle for many — but not all.

In 2020, attorney Keith Higgins launched an independent campaign for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney race after the incumbent, Jackie Johnson, came under scrutiny after Ahmaud Arbery’s murder. Higgins collected signatures from Glynn, Camden, Wayne, Appling, and Jeff Davis, made it onto the ballot, and won. 

In 2024, Laura Khurana announced she would run for the At-Large County Commissioner Post 2 in Glynn. She needed 3,098 signatures from registered county voters and submitted more than 3,600. The Board of Elections ruled her bid a failure because 1,000 signatures did not meet the legal standard for candidate petitions. 

“The truth is that one in every three voters is nonpartisan. They have chosen not to be affiliated with either of the two major political parties, but there is a barrier to an independent getting on the ballot,” said McCormick. 

In McIntosh County, Bradley Smith qualified to run as an independent for the McIntosh District 1 County Commission seat in the November election after meeting the 108-signature threshold. Smith is also running a campaign focused on transparency.

This fall, James Daniels announced he would run for Effingham County Commission District 5 as an independent write-in candidate, hoping public outrage over the planned $20 billion OpenAI data center would help his bid succeed. 

Thompson, however, chose the signature route in her quest to win elected office in Glynn. She ran as a Democrat in 2022 for the same seat, but decided to forgo a party label in 2026. 

“One of the things that I heard in my first campaign was that people were looking for something different, and they were looking for someone who was willing to represent them, and not a national political party,” Thompson said. “And so I actually say that the reason why I decided to run as an independent is that I listened to the people that I engaged with in my first campaign, and I responded to what they were asking, which is what public service officials are supposed to do.”

The race had attracted both a Republican and a Democrat. Thompson’s path to get on the ballot was rocky from the start. 

Thompson’s Republican opponent, Lori Kozlowski, a local Realtor with Coldwell Banker Access Realty, said she respects the petition process and believes the discussion of the 5% threshold is more of a policy conversation than a matter of how laws are currently administered. 

“I think you have to find a balance, because I do think it should be a meaningful enough number to show that a candidate has some level of support within the community, but then at the same time, it shouldn’t create an unreasonable barrier either for someone who does want to serve,” she said. 

The Democratic candidate in the race, Craig Campbell, Senior Pastor at Zion Baptist, said that the signature-gathering process is stringent and that he supports it.

“If it was not a process, that has governance. You may have 30 to 50 candidates attempting to qualify as independents. So it has to be compliance and governance in that process,” Campbell said. 

Neither the Democratic Party of Georgia nor the Georgia Republican Party responded to requests for comments by the time of publication. 

How hard can it really be?

Depending on the office and location, petition signature requirements for a third-party candidate can range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands. The number is only one part of the equation—gathering signatures is also fraught with obstacles. 

From people wary of someone approaching them with a clipboard and fearing scams to the many intricacies involved, the process becomes infeasible for some. Thompson was required to gather 508 signatures, all from residents of District 4 of Glynn County. 

“It’s not easy. It doesn’t sound like a lot — 600 signatures — but I’ve been through signature-gathering efforts, and they are hard,” McCormick said.

Thompson said she started canvassing in February, knocking on more than 1,000 doors, and she went to community events all over town. 

Her petition numbers were growing. But for added security, she went back to people who may have only printed or signed to ensure that they did both. The process could be sabotaged by simple mistakes, such as signing their own sheet, in which case the entire page of valid signatures could be tossed in the trash.

Thompson was working from home when she got a phone call from the Board of Elections. The first words she heard were that she was six short. 

“I was definitely pretty surprised. I knew it was going to be close,” she said. 

The Board of Elections must follow the state charter, which requires officials to manually verify each signature against official documents, such as a state-issued identification card. It also requires verifying the signers’ addresses against state records.

Matt Weiss, an elections lawyer and the General Counsel for the Democratic Party of Georgia, said that independent candidates should get legal counsel who knows Georgia’s complex rules to increase chances of success. “If you’re going to mount a campaign, you know it’s important that you know the rules so you can comply with them,” he said. “And on top of that, you should probably aim to get 10% over whatever the minimum is, because you know there are people going to get thrown off.”

McCormick of the Independent Voter Project sees no problem with Georgia’s requirement that candidates gather signatures to earn a spot on the ballot. What she says is unfair is that it applies only to third-party candidates. 

“The name of the game is to limit the competition from outside of the two-party system. So this is just what all of them do. This is totally normal. This is totally par for the course, whether or not it’s right or wrong,” said McCormick. 

Back in Brunswick, Thompson has decided to keep up her bid for the school district race. She is now campaigning as a write-in candidate for the seat. 

Without appearing on the ballot, however, the path to victory is hard. Until November, she plans to increase her visibility by showing up at local football games and pretty much any other event that brings the community together. 

“It’s America’s 250th birthday this year, and if you look back at our founding fathers, they all said that a two-party system was not good for democracy,” she said.