U.S. Senate candidate Jared Young announced on Friday that he has submitted 25,000 signatures to the Missouri secretary of state to establish a new independent political party in the state.
The Better Party is aimed at providing ballot access for independent candidates in Missouri’s upcoming November elections, said Young, former president and CEO of Joplin-based human resources outsourcing firm Employer Advantage.
Young, of Webb City, is also an attorney who graduated from Harvard Law School. His wife and six children moved with him to Missouri from Washington, D.C., in 2015. He’s an active volunteer and serves on the board of the Joplin Boys & Girls Club of Southwest Missouri.
A big difference between the Better Party and traditional third parties, such as the Libertarian or the Green parties, is that those parties meet the needs of specific ideological groups, Young said.
“We are looking to represent the moderate majority of Missourians, these people that have been relatively passive in politics, which has allowed the Republican and Democratic parties to be taken over by the extremes of our society,” Young said after submitting the signatures. “This is to reclaim that power back for the moderate majority that is completely unrepresented right now.”
As he started his campaign as an independent candidate, Young said he discovered there are a lot of barriers preventing independents from running successfully. Perhaps the biggest barrier is ballot access. Candidates are forced early on to spend a lot of their time and resources collecting the required 10,000 signatures to be put on the Missouri ballot.
“What I discovered as I was starting my Senate run is that I could spend a whole bunch of time and resources just to get 10,000 signatures for myself, or I could get 10,000 signatures to establish a new party in the state of Missouri that could give ballot access to independent candidates,” Young said.
According to Young, a 2023 survey, conducted by Y2 Analytics, of 524 likely general election voters showed that 43% of Missouri voters don’t claim affiliation with either Republican or Democratic parties.
Additionally, the poll found that 70% of Missouri voters would be open to an independent or third party candidate in the 2024 U.S. Senate race, and 64% said they want an option beyond the two major parties.
Young said the numbers show independents are the plurality group in Missouri but until now haven’t had viable candidates to represent them.
“The idea with the Better Party is to provide those viable candidates that Missourians have already been screaming for a long time,” Young said.
The 25,000 signatures submitted to the Missouri secretary of state to establish the Better Party were more than double the number needed. Young said he wanted to be absolutely sure the process would go through just fine.
The number of signatures shows that it’s crystal clear people are longing for something different, he said. As voters are tired of the anger and contempt of the two main parties, they’re eager for other options.
In future elections, independent candidates selected by the Better Party won’t have to collect those 10,000 signatures to be on the ballot. They can run as Better Party candidates. However, for this upcoming election, the Better Party had to choose their slate when they turned in their signatures on Friday.
Because they had a relatively short time to recruit candidates, there’s one candidate other than Young on the Better Party’s slate. Blake Ashby is running for the U.S. House of Representatives from the 1st Congressional District, in the St. Louis area.
Young said the Better Party isn’t a political party in the sense that it has an ideological goal. It’s more about the approach to politics. Following…
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