June 10 - Last fall, while the presidential hopefuls from the two major parties were gearing up for a season of primary elections, the Socialist Party USA chose their 2008 presidential nominee. He's Brian Moore, of Spring Hill, Florida, just north of Tampa. But, as Seán Kinane reports, being the nominee of a minor party does not necessarily mean you'll voters will get to vote for him or her.

Moore beat out four other Socialist Party USA candidates on the third ballot at their national convention in St. Louis last October. But unlike the Democrats and Republicans, the elected nominee from the Socialist Party USA, one of several socialist parties in the country, does not automatically get on the ballot in any state. Instead, Moore said, he has to 'work at it and earn each state.'

But in most states, Moore said, it's much more difficult to get listed on the ballot. Many require tens of thousands of signatures or expensive filing fees.

"California, for one, requires about 158,000 signatures if you wanted to run as an Independent Candidate, and 89,000 signatures as a party. Maryland 32,000 signatures, Michigan 38,000 signatures. They just try to beat you down one way or another"

In some states, alternative parties have earned automatic access. Sometimes they nominate other third party candidates to run on their ticket. Moore explains how this has proven to be another obstacle.

"I'm competing with Ralph Nader, in the state of Michigan, trying to piggy-back on the Natural Law Party. In the state of Delaware there's an Independence Party, and they're tending to favor him but they've invited me to their convention, so I'll have to compete with Ralph Nader.

South Carolina, I might end up having to compete with Cynthia McKinney, if she wins the Green nomination, for another minor party. And in California, I'm competing with the other 3 minor candidates, Nader, McKinney and La Riva, for the Peace and Freedom nomination.."

The Socialist Party USA has about three thousand members across the country. Instead of working for his campaign, Moore said, volunteers work to coordinate access to each state's ballot.

Moore's platform includes an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, free and accessible national healthcare, and transferring ownership of corporations to the workers. He raises campaign money in order to collect signatures, either through traveling to the states or to pay professional petitioners. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain have been raising millions, if not tens of millions of dollars each month, but Moore has his sights set on much less lofty figures.

"We usually raise about $2,000 a month. I am going to make a concerted effort in the next five months to try and get that up. We want to see if we can qualify for matching funds, which is $5,000 in 20 states. "

Moore is already on the ballot in Vermont and will qualify in six other states soon. He expects to be on the ballot of at least twenty states by November's election. From WMNF in Tampa, I'm Seán Kinane.

Interview: Pete Edelmen, Georgetown University on Voter Access

As ballot access issues are still a major challenge for most third parties, But it's not just third party candidates who have ballot access problems, many voters do too. Georgetown Professor Pete Edelman is formerly of the Civil Rights Division at US Department of Justice has taken a long look voter access.

Over 40 years ago he traveled the country with then Senator Robert F Kennedy to see first how poverty and racism prevailed in stopping many in the country from voting.

Today as he judges the political landscape of voter ID's and proof of citizenship requirements, Edelman says even though some things have changed, some things have stated the same.

"Well, the struggle for full civil rights in the United states is never over. And we've made great progress in the sense that we've broken down the legalized segregation that we had, the American Apartheid that we had. But there are still so many ways in which our society does things that are designed for people who have the power, to hold onto the power. And too often based on race, to keep people from achieving and being fully included in the society.

So voting of course is one way, that democracy with a small 'D', in which the power of many can manifest itself. And if people are threatened that in a given state, in a presidential campaign, that if everybody get to vote, then their side is going to lose the campaign, and they do hold power in that state - think Florida 2000 for example - but it goes on to this day. They're going to make sure that people who might vote for the other party, one way or another, face barriers to voting such that they might not succeed in actually being able to vote."

".. there's a kind of structural or institutional racism that is pervasive. And all of those things are the Civil Rights agenda - especially the place where race meets poverty. That's the intersection that's the Civil Right challenge in the 21st Century. "