Ballot access rules, called nomination rules outside the United States, regulate the conditions under which a candidate or political party is either entitled to stand for election or to appear on voters' ballots. The criteria to stand as a candidate depends on the individual legal system, however they may include the age of a candidate, citizenship, endorsement by a political party and profession. Legal restrictions, such as those based around competence or moral aptitude, can be used in a discriminatory manner.

Restrictive and discriminatory ballot access rules can impact the civil rights of candidates, political parties and voters. Each state has its own ballot access laws to determine who may appear on ballots and who may not. According to Article I, Section 4, of the United States Constitution, the authority to regulate the time, place, and manner of federal elections is up to each State, unless Congress legislates otherwise.

The primary argument put forward by States for restricting ballot access has been the rational conclusion that setting ballot access criteria too low would result in numerous candidates on the ballot, splitting the votes of similar minded voters. Example: With Plurality voting, and old but common way to pick the winner, the candidate with the most votes wins, even if it is not a majority. Suppose a district is 55% Democrat and 45% Republican, or vise versa.

If there are two candidates which appeal to democrats, and one who appeals to republicans, the vote of the democrats will likely be split between the first two candidates, and the republican will win even though 55% strongly prefer someone else. Plurality races, also known as First past the post, tend to cause consolidation among political parties for this reason. Also, it would be expensive to print 100+ names on a ballot.

However, proponents of ballot access reform say that reasonably easy access to the ballot does not lead to a glut of candidates, even where many candidates do appear on the ballot, as was the case in the crowded 2003 California recall. In that case, such actual crowding did not confuse voters: "Even though 135 candidates appeared on the ballot, newspapers reported that voters did not have trouble finding the candidate they wished to vote for." Historically, there were generally no restrictions on ballot access in the United States until after the introduction of the so-called "Australian ballot" beginning in the 1880s. The eighteenth century prevalence of "voice voting" gave way to paper ballots, but until the 1880s paper ballots were not officially designed and printed by the government but were instead privately produced "tickets" that were distributed (usually by political parties) to the voter, who would take the ticket to the polling place and deposit it in the ballot box.

The 1880s reform movement that led to officially designed secret ballots had some salutary effects, but it also gave the government control over who could be on the ballot. As historian Peter Argersinger has pointed out, the reform that conferred power on officials to regulate who may be on the ballot carried with it the danger that this power would be abused by officialdom and that legislatures controlled by the established political parties (specifically, the Republican and Democratic Parties), would enact restrictive ballot access laws to influence election outcomes, for partisan purposes, in order to ensure re-election of their own party's candidates.

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