I totally agree with everything you just said. The only concern I have is the extent to which any legislative response could make life more difficult for independent candidates who are serious.
Say, for example, we said that we're going to require more signatures, as a way of really testing whether or not the candidacy is serious. For someone who's running with a political party, who has that network of support, it's going to be easy to meet the threshold if it is higher, but for a truly independent candidate who is serious, who wants to run to be the representative of the riding—and that's important—I don't want that person to have to pay an extra price because of the longest ballot committee. That's my only concern.