A Trump independent run got harder Thursday night

Paul Singer | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption First GOP debates: Trump, Fiorina take spotlight As expected, Thursday night’s Republican debates on Fox News featured plenty of fireworks from frontrunner Donald Trump. USA TODAY’s Paul Singer on how the crowded field competed to make strong impressions on voters.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump's appearance in Thursday night's GOP debate in Cleveland just made it harder for him to run as an independent candidate for president.

Ohio is one of several states that have "sore loser" rules prohibiting a candidate from appearing on the ballot as an independent or third-party candidate after they have previously declared themselves a candidate in another party.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, has concluded that since Trump has filed with the Federal Election Commission to pursue the Republican nomination and "voluntarily participated" in the Republican presidential debate in the state of Ohio, he has "chosen a party for this election cycle" and declared himself "as a Republican in the state of Ohio," said Husted spokesman Joshua Eck.

Mark that down as the first major hurdle Trump would face in trying to mount a 50-state campaign for president as an independent. But it likely would not be the only one.

Trump refused to rule out an independent bid during Thursday's GOP debate, and he kept the notion alive again during an interview Friday on NBC's Today show. "I don't want to do the independent thing, but I do keep it and it is leverage," he said.

The biggest barrier to a nationwide presidential campaign is money, which Trump has plenty of, but it is not the only barrier. Since each state has its own ballot-access rules, an independent candidate would have to run a grass-roots effort in 50 states to collect enough valid signatures to qualify. And in each state, a Trump campaign would have to overcome legal challenges from the Republican or Democratic parties, which spend millions every election cycle trying to block other candidates from getting on the ballot.

"It doesn't matter how much money you have," said Oliver Hall, an election lawyer who has advised Ralph Nader on ballot-access issues for years. "If they want to keep you off the ballot, they will keep you off the ballot." The "sore loser" rules are only one example.

Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, said that to qualify for all 50 ballots, a candidate would need to get a total of about 560,000 people to either sign petitions or register for a Trump party in states where it is easier to get on the ballot as a party than as an individual. Trump would likely have to collect twice that number to make sure he has enough valid signatures to withstand challenges from the major parties.

Signatures can be gathered by paid collectors or by volunteers on the ground, and experts say the cost of such an effort depends in part on how many people will volunteer for the candidate.

Getting on all 50 state ballots would cost about $8 million, said Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico who was the Libertarian nominee for president in 2012. Beyond the money, he said, "it would have to be a very organized effort and it would take a lot of work."

But Johnson does not dismiss Trump's chances if he decides to do it. "The main factor in a vote is name familiarity and the main ingredient to name familiarity is money," Johnson said, "and Trump has both."

Joe Andrew, who chaired the Democratic National Committee from 1999 to 2001, said the party at the time did not make any effort at the national level to keep Nader off the ballot. "Had we done that, Al Gore would have been president,” he said.

But he said Husted's decision may simply prove to Trump supporters that he is not being "treated fairly" — the standard Trump has set for deciding where he to run as an independent. It is also a decision Trump could obviously challenge in court, Andrew said.

Andrew also noted that Trump could get a head start by having a super PAC working on ballot-access issues on his behalf even while he is still running for the GOP nomination.

James Linger, a ballot-access lawyer in Tulsa, said "you can't just wake up one day and say 'I'm going to get on the ballot.' " Collecting signatures and knowing the rules in each state is an arduous process and "you have to have people who know what they are doing." In addition, Linger says, "the longer he waits the harder it will be" as deadlines approach early next year for applying to get on the ballot.

Winger said that if Trump does mount an independent campaign, he will have an easier time of it than some of his predecessors simply because candidates like Nader and Johnson have been mounting challenges to state ballot-access restrictions for years.

Barriers to ballot access have been "coming down for 30 years because the minor parties in the country have been working hard to reduce these barriers."