How is it that Stephen Colbert can run for the Presidency in only one state?

As many of you know, Stephen Colbert has announced that he is running for the President of the United States. This raises several issues:

* Each state individually regulates who will appear on their presidential ballots. Thus, it is possible to run for President only in South Carolina, as Mr Colbert is doing. More importantly, the state requirements often place third party candidates at a severe disadvantage: candidates from the Democratic and Republican parties are generally guaranteed a slot on the ballot, while third party candidates must fight for the same right. Consider Ralph Nader's Presidential campaigns, particularly that of 2000, in which the number of votes he received enabled his party to appear on the ballots of more (though still not all) states in the 2004 elections.

* A related issue is that, since a candidate only needs 270 electoral college votes to gain the presidency, and those 270 votes can be assembled from as few as eleven states, a candidate can be elected president without appearing on the ballot in 39 states (or the District of Columbia).

* And then there is the issue of the electoral college itself. When we cast our ballots on election day, we are not actually voting for a president. We are directing our state's electors to vote for the candidate of our choice. Since the distribution of electors does not reflect the distribution of the population, and since each state's electors (typically) vote together, winning the popular vote is not necessary to become President. (Remember Al Gore? You know, the guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his ecological work?) This also assumes that the electors vote as they are directed.

What can you do? Well, I see two options:
1) Sit on your ass and do nothing, or,
2) Get behind the movement to reform the voting process, such as the National Popular Vote's proposals on electoral college reform.