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[–] astroskag 0 points 5 points (+5|-0) ago 

Money.

I don't mean that to be cynical, it's just what it is. There's an inordinate amount of paperwork and record-keeping, which generally necessitates hiring one or more lawyers. Then you've got to get a crazy amount of signatures on what amounts to a petition (the number varies by state, but it's usually upwards of 1000 and more like 40,000 in some places), so you've generally got to hire people to organize petition drives or head up door-to-door volunteers.

After that, in some places, you pay a filing fee outright to the state.

This is, by the way, on a per-state basis. There's not one single 'federal' process to get on the Presidential ballot nationwide - you have to do all this for each state. Some states have additional hurdles, you can read about them on a state-by-state basis here.

This is all engineered by the major parties to make things as difficult as possible for other candidates, and also why corporate donations are so important to candidates - this is what you have to do just to get on the ballot. Forget how much money you have to spend after that to actually get elected.

[–] [deleted] 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

[Deleted]

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[–] astroskag 0 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago 

Yes, and that's arguably by design. Some people would say it's only one contributing factor in a larger system intended to make it nearly impossible for third-party candidates to gain traction at a national level.