Kentucky bans third parties from college boards

I've touched on this problem before in The Last Word, but now it's come to the fore again.

Kentucky's state universities and community colleges have governing boards whose members are supposed to reflect the 2 major parties. Because registered Democrats in Kentucky outnumber Republicans by almost 2-to-1, each board is required by law to have almost twice as many Democrats as Republicans.

Near the end of his reign, Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher illegally stacked the boards with his copartisans, which created Republican majorities on at least some of the boards. Now Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear is trying to correct this by appointing a host of Democrats to the colleges' governing boards. The board members' 6-year terms are staggered, so this may be just enough to bring the boards to their legally mandated partisan ratio.

Whither third parties and independents? We get nothin'. That's the law, unfortunately. It's been the law for some time now. Although a news article unwittingly implies that the boards have to reflect independents and third parties, the law actually only allows the 2 leading parties.

We need to take a serious look at this law. I don't think there's any doubt that it's unconstitutional.

In the Red Scare of the 1950s, public employees were often forced to affirm that they weren't in the Communist Party. However, I thought courts struck down these requirements. How are these requirements any different from Kentucky's requirement that college board appointees aren't a member of the Greens, the Libertarians, or the Natural Law Party?

I'm sure these third parties are in good legal standing - which is something I seriously question about the Republicans after the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal.

We also have to ask how many of the Democratic powerbrokers who win these important appointments are actually DLCers - in contrast to what Democratic voters want. And some of them are.

You'd be amazed at what's considered liberal in Kentucky these days. Trust me, today's party leadership doesn't know liberal. The DLC/GOP unholy alliance must be a major factor in why Kentucky's university system has long been going out of its way to appease right-wing extremists.

(Source: http://www.kentucky.com/210/story/451850.html)