# American Politics- Alternitive Parties

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-politics-alternitive-parties/17460>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [February 8, 2000, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-politics-alternitive-parties/17460 "2000-02-08T09:32:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Vinny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Vinny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vinny)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-politics-alternitive-parties/17460/41 "2000-02-13T02:49:00Z")

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Thinking of running under the pseudonym " none of the above". Is it too late to throw my hat in ring ?

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**Author:** ![Boris\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@Boris\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boris_B)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2000, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-politics-alternitive-parties/17460/42 "2000-02-13T02:58:00Z")

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If I may continue, and I do apologize for my long-windedness, in the system I advocate there would be no publicly-held primaries. Parties would be almost certainly be smaller, and their active memberships would choose their candidates in any method they wished. There could be primaries, or caucuses, or roulette wheels or whatever, but they wouldn’t be funded by taxes. This would naturally shorten the election cycle considerably, and there would be no chance of some obnoxious state legislature passing some unenforceable and possibly unconstitutional law declaring their right to have the first primary in the nation. (But who could imagine such a thing anyway? _chuckle_)

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