A lot of people think Ralph Nader should get out of the presidential race. They argue that he’s a spoiler who would take votes away from Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards. They may be right about that. But they’re still wrong.

Building a third party is a Herculean task on the unlevel playing field Democrats and Republicans have created to protect their duopoly. With the two major parties dealing the cards, the deck’s stacked against political upstarts, and Nader’s difficulty in getting on the ballot is a perfect illustration of the problem with democracy. Over the years, Democrat- and Republican-controlled state legislatures have enacted laws that make it more difficult for independent and third-party candidates to get on the ballot. Many of them are silly.

For example, Kansas lawmakers only recently repealed a 102-year-old law that required political parties to have only one word in their names. The law had been used to restrict ballot access for parties such as the Farmer-Labor Party, the Single Tax Party, the Socialist Labor Party and the Natural Law Party. But don’t get too excited. The Kansas Legislature only entertained the bill because the Natural Law Party of Kansas and American Civil Liberties Union sued the state’s secretary of state and changing the law was a condition of the settlement.

Sadly, the Kansas law is fairly typical.

The two-party system is a dinosaur that politicians ignore and pretend isn’t standing between voters and democracy. Most of them anyway. Congressman Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas, would like to talk about ballot-access reform, but he can’t even attract a co-sponsor for his Voter Freedom Act, which has been languishing in the U.S. House of Representatives for years in one form or another. His current bill, H.R. 1941, would establish uniform standards in all states regarding ballot access for third-party and independent candidates, but it’s never been voted on, or even moved out of committee.

In a speech before the House last month, Paul said, “The blatant attempt by a major party to keep Ralph Nader off state ballots demonstrates how restrictive ballot-access laws are used to preserve a political monopoly, limit voter choices, and deny the rights of millions of Americans who support third parties and independent candidates an opportunity to effectively participate in the political process.”

Ballot-access laws came into being around 1890, but at first were fairly innocuous. It wasn’t until the 1930s that they became more restrictive in an effort to keep candidates from the Communist Party off the ballot. They were made more rigorous again in the late 1960s after George Wallace received about 13 percent of the vote in the 1968 presidential election.

It’s time to turn back the clock.

America needs a third party today as much as it did in 1854, when the Republican Party was new. Part of the reason for that is found in the 2000 election, when neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore received a clear mandate from voters, when almost half of eligible voters stayed home on Election Day. Consider, too, that most polls put Bush and Kerry in a veritable dead heat in the race for the presidency.

That said, I’m not voting for Nader, even if he manages to meet Iowa’s ballot-access requirements by gathering signatures of 2,400 individuals from no fewer than 10 counties who are qualified to register to the vote. But I should have the choice. All Americans should.

Beth Dalbey, editorial director for Business Publications Corp., can be reached by e-mail at bethdalbey@bpcdm.com.