OK, but why? The majors will be racing toward the center anyway.
You know this and I know this. But we’re geeks. Most voters aren’t.
To me, the question isn’t “what’s the ideal voting system,” but “are there any improvements to the one we’ve got now that regular voters would be able to easily grasp and could be convinced to support?”
I suspect that the modest additional cost of a runoff election would be easier to sell most voters on than getting them to understand IRV more than momentarily.
I think that Unity 08 has helped push them more toward the center this time. Arguably Unity 08 is, rather than a cause, a reflection of an existing mood after W the Great Polarizer. But the fact that a third party could be pulling off votes in the middle may help raise support for Romney & Giuliani as opposed to, say, Brownback. (Huckabee may still win the nomination because he’s Joe Likable & because Unity 08 isn’t putting enough fear into the GOP process.)
I’m not sure Unity 08 has much effect on the Dems right now.
The independent executive and winner-take-all organization of the legislature combine to render third parties irrelevant to U.S. politics except as spoilers. With some minor differences, (the relative powers of the governor and lieutenant governor of Texas, the unicameral legislature of Nebraska), the states have all followed the guidelines laid out for the Congress and President. Since the U.S. cannot use coalitions among parties to control the executive, (and currently have no well-established methods of sharing power in the legislature), third parties always lack power. Since a party without power (or even the hope of power) is pretty much a disincentive to people seeking candidates to support, I do not see any third party being effective or surviving for more than two elections. Some massive change in social dynamics might raise a third party to supplant one of the two current parties, but at the end of a decade we will be back to two, again.
If someone wishes to make alternative parties viable, they will need to change the manner in which the parties interact in the legislative bodies, probably through changes to the Federal or state constitutions.
As to the importance of the 2008 election: meh. All elections are important. If the electorate gives the Presidency and Congress to a single party (where the executive and legislative agree on a way to extricate us from Iraq), that will–aside from displaying more foresight than we have managed, recently–provide a specific direction for the country. ANY other outcome, particularly where a president cannot count on party support from anyone, will simply result in more of what we now see.
Not at all. It is enough to change the legislatures’ internal rules to give third-party members seats on the committees. It is possible for third parties to play an important policymaking role under such circumstances, without replacing the separation-of-powers system with a parliamentary system. The essential thing is to change the electoral systems – to adopt electoral fusion, instant-runoff voting and proportional representation – eliminating the “spoiler” problem and giving third parties a fair shot at representation in the legislatures and multimember policymaking bodies (and in some executive offices). Which in most cases can be done by legislation with no constitutional amendments.