How do we get a viable third party

Great Debates
1

I’ve been following the UK elections a bit and it dawned on me that the major parties in the UK are playing nicer with each other and I believe part of the reason is that Labour’s losses were not always Conservative gains, sometimes they are Liberal Democrat gains or gains for some other party.

I am becoming more and more convinced that the only way to reverse the extreme partisanship we see these days is to have multiple parties. I think most people on this board probably agree that multi-party systems are probably healthier.

In the land of free markets and competition, we have allowed our country to be run by a duopoly, sure they compete in the same way that Verizon and AT&T compete but they also collude to shut out third parties the same way that Verizon and AT&T colluded to shut out smaller carriers from 4G in the latest FCC auction.

I think the teabaggers are a selfish or stupid but if they manage to break up this two party system, I’ll have to reconsider my opinuion of them.

If not for the sort of mindless teabagging revolution we see from the teabaggers, how else do we ever get a viable third party?

2

As I’ve said before, the first thing you should do is get rid of your archaic voting system. Using some form of preferential voting system would get rid of the idea that a vote for a third party is either wasted or stolen from the closest of the big two.

3

The first step is getting rid of the electoral college. Then, some form of preferential voting and some form of proportional representation. I like the idea of a New Zealand style mixed system with top-ups from party lists.

Eliminate the at least one U.S. representative per state requirement. In fact, ignore state boundaries for the purposes of the House of Representatives. Double the size of the House of Representatives. Maybe increase the Senate to three members per state. Eliminate the vice president’s tie-breaking vote.

Nationalize regulation and administration of federal elections, thus preventing state and local governments from locking out small parties. Create a neutral apportionment commission to draw district lines. Allow all adults who have legal permanent presence in the country to vote in federal elections.

If you want to have a multi-party system, you have to have a strong party system. Our weak party system won’t support it. Strengthen political parties by restricting voting in primaries to declared party members. Allow party organizations to eject individuals who fail to vote with the party on important issues. If a sitting member is ejected from his party, require him or her to run in a snap by-election under a different party banner in order to keep his or her seat.

4

Oh, and allow fusion voting in federal elections, like in New York.

5

Is there Constitutional precedent which would allow a 3rd party to sue the entrenched parties for a right for equal ballot access, election funds, and so on? I don’t think the Constitution says that there must be 2 major parties, no more and no less. Forgive my ignorance on this point.

6

We have winner take all elections. In a three way race where Party X gets 35% of the vote, Party Y gets 34%, and Party Z gets 31%, Party X wins the seat. And if there are 435 seats across the country, and all have the same result, Party X will get 100% of the seats.

This is the reason we have a two party system–if you don’t win a plurality, you get nothing. There’s no prize for second place, and there’s definately no prize for third place. Lots of countries do have prizes for second place and third place, and this encourages multiple parties, since you don’t have to win a majority to win a seat.

Of course, American political parties don’t operate the way most European parties do. If you want to run as a Republican or Democrat, you just declare yourself one, and run. You don’t need permission from anyone, and if you win the primary then you’re the party candidate. This means very weak party discipline, because each representative is elected individually, not from a party list.

7

Unfortunately, multi-party democracies really have no formal advantages over two-party democracies. The number of parties in and of itself doesn’t really drive anything; what matters is the electoral rules. The rules most of the rest of the developed world uses are pretty much equivalent to ours are worse. In fact, there are very few ways we could actually improve our rules. Winner-take-all plurality rule is actually really good. It has been shown to satisfy May’s theorem.

The theory of electoral rules is very deep water and is part of the broader literature of social choice theory. The modern classic of this discipline is David Austen-Smith and Geoff Banks’ Positive Political Theory I: Collective Preference. It’s a stunningly good book, but not exactly easy reading.

8

In Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party, 520 U.S. 351 (1997), the New Party sued an election office to be allowed to run electoral fusion candidates (nominees of more than one party) on the theory that the Freedom of Association Clause of the First Amendment protects the right. The SCOTUS shot them down 6/3.

9

According to that link, May’s theorem applies to elections in which there are two choices, so I don’t see how it applies to elections in which there are more than two parties.

10

It’s since been generalized to apply to decisions involving more than pairwise selection of options.

11

This math geek would still need May’s Theorem translated into English to fully understand its implications for a single election.

But it’s clear that it applies to a single election, and not to the evolution of political parties over time. As such, at best it’s the right answer to the wrong question.

The real question is, if you’ve got a left-of-center party that sucks, why is there no way to get on the road to replacing it with a better left-of-center party without putting the right-of-center party in power for many years while you’re doing so? (Or, symmetrically, having a right-of-center party that sucks, and putting the left-of-center party in power.)

The emergence of a substantial group dedicated to adding extra firepower to their side of the political spectrum should help that side of the political spectrum and hurt the other, regardless of whether they work within the existing major party on ‘their side’.

Instead, due to no runoffs and no fusion, a third party of one side of the spectrum helps the major party on the other side.

Making runoffs universal in elections for Federal office where neither side wins a majority is, AFAIAC, a necessary condition for a third party to eventually succeed. Fusion would be helpful but not essential.

12

This should motivate the sucky party to not be sucky if it wants to win elections. If it fails to adjust, not only does it lose, it hands power over to another party nowhere near it on the ideological spectrum.

This logic is more or less what put Le Pen on the ticket in what was it, 2002? Runoffs plus a profusion of parties all on the same side gave the French people a choice between “a Nazi and a crook”, as I think the French said at the time. Emergence of extra firepower can produce some pretty lousy outcomes, especially in runoff elections.

Warning: jargon ahead.

I personally dislike runoffs because they tend to fail irrelevance of independent alternatives in two-round runoffs. This can be a very big deal, though there are plenty of social choice theorists with bigger chops than mine who don’t think it is a very important condition.

On the other hand, I rather like approval voting.

13

Quick addendum: the booze is talking. The French election of 2002 does not fail independence. It’s just a massive strategic nomination problem.

Social choice theory isn’t my area of specialization.

14

In America ,money runs everything. The last presidential campaign required 700 million dollars. This year will be more. How does a 3rd party get that kind of money? The money largely goes to TV networks who will air campaign ads all day long. They will cover those candidates to the exclusion of all others. Third parties can get no exposure therefore no traction.

15

You’d have to convince the institutions of state power that you’d do a better job than their current representatives. That would be almost impossible. If they lost that much faith they’d either put their own people into the current parties or make their own.

So find a way to bring about the dissolution of the United States and maybe you could do it. Good luck with that.

16

They can not even get in on the debates. Some small parties have some good ideas. Maybe the major parties are afraid to have to answer their charges in a debate form. But the system is set up by the 2 parties to entrench themselves . I had to listen to PBS debates of the other parties last election. It was not aired on regular or cable news.

17

Quit trying to start at the top. A Presidency is won by cooperating and winning over powerful people, quite a few of which are in the Senate and the House of Representatives. If you’re just running another “The Republicans and Democrats are equally evil!” campaign, all you’ve done is alienate most of the politicians in the country without giving a solid reason for people to vote for you.
Start small-create a political party with solid goals, not a gathering of malcontents with vague and conflicting ideas, and go for smaller offices. Build your power base over time, kick out those who would trade their name for your support(Nader, anyone?), and make a name for yourself. Subvert the base, and eventually the body politic might be yours.

18

I think the best way would be to create a regional faction, like the CCF, Reform, and Social Credit parties and the Parti Quebecois in Canada.

Maybe Southern Democrats or West Coast Republicans could become a splinter group?

19

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
We have winner take all elections. In a three way race where Party X gets 35% of the vote, Party Y gets 34%, and Party Z gets 31%, Party X wins the seat. And if there are 435 seats across the country, and all have the same result, Party X will get 100% of the seats.

This is the reason we have a two party system–if you don’t win a plurality, you get nothing. There’s no prize for second place, and there’s definately no prize for third place. Lots of countries do have prizes for second place and third place, and this encourages multiple parties, since you don’t have to win a majority to win a seat.
[/QUOTE]

The argument that first-the-post is the reason you’ve only got two parties just doesn’t fly, in and of itself. In the U.K. and in Canada, first-past-the-post is used in national elections, with exactly the same principle of winner-take-all. Both those countries have several viable parties, not just a two-party system.

For example, in the 2005 general election in the U.K., 10 parties won seats, under a first-past-the-post system: election map, 2005.

In Canada, in the 2008 general election, four parties won seats, under a first-past-the-post system: election map, 2008.

I think that hogarth’s point is a good one. In both the U.K. and Canada, regional parties are common, and that is reflected in the maps. Does that mean that the U.S. is simply a more homogenous country, and therefore regional parties don’t get traction? Dunno.

I also think that acsenray’s points are also valid:

[QUOTE=acsenray]
Nationalize regulation and administration of federal elections, thus preventing state and local governments from locking out small parties. Create a neutral apportionment commission to draw district lines.
[/QUOTE]

Since the national elections are controlled so much by the states, each state can pass laws that favour the existing parties, which tends to lock out upstart parties. In Canada, where federal elections are in the control of the federal government, the rules are much more neutral, and they make it easy for a new party to start in.

When the rules are made state-by-state, at the local level, it’s a lot easier to have cozy rules that favour particular groups, where the two parties accomodate each other to keep the others out. Moving the rule-making to the national level makes the subject to much greater media scrutiny, and also makes it much more difficult for local interests to govern - because the rules have to apply across the board.

Moving the seat distribution mechanism to a neutral body would also help, because currently, both parties in the state legislatures draw the electoral maps in a way that favours the two established parties. If a non-partisan body did it, as is the case in most democracies, based solely on population distribution and not past voting practices, the playing field is much more level.

20

A recent thread asked which countries have such a rule. Thailand and South Africa were the only examples cited.

Thailand’s rule, which because of a waiting period is more onerous, was adopted, as you suggest, to strengthen parties. Unfortunately it was the wrong solution for the wrong problem.