I’ve read several people here write that they would like to see more third party participation in American politics. In a recent thread about hypothetical legal reforms, several people posted that they’d like to enact laws to promote third parties. But I don’t recall seeing specific proposals and I’m wondering what these people feel would help.
I’d like to make it clear right from the OP: I put this in Great Debates but I’m not interested in a debate about whether third parties are good or bad, or discussions on the platforms of any particular third party, or complaints about how the Democrats and Republicans are evil and/or identical or even discussions on how third parties could gain influence through other means. I’m just wondering if the two party monopoly in American politics is really de jure or just de facto.
The only two ideas I came up with were opening up candidate eligibility and eliminating party references. But I don’t think either would really help third parties.
If you lowered the standards for eligibility, you’d make it easier for third party candidates to get on the ballots. But you’d also make it easier for everyone to get on the ballots. Suppose, to give an extreme example, you simply let anyone who was constitutionally eligible put their name in to run for an office. The ballots would be swamped by candidates. You’d have ten thousand candidates running for President and a ballot that looked like a phone book.
Or suppose you eliminated all party references. Candidates could only identify themselves by name on the ballot, not by party affiliation. It would theoretically put the Democrats and Republicans on an equal footing with the Greens and Libertarians and Socialists and others (as well as non-party independants).
But, as I wrote, I don’t feel either of these ideas would actually help third parties. In both cases it would make most voters more dependant on name recognition. The Democrats and Republicans would have been able to finance ad campaigns for their candidates and virtually all voters would just pick one of the two names they’d heard of.
We’d have to do some uprooting if we wished to emulate many of our European friends with their coalition governments. Proportional representation and public financing of elections would help a lot, although the devil is in the details and there are many different systems out there. Still, I think it’d be worth it because IMO we look bad in this area compared to many of our allies.
First of all, change the election financing laws viz. matching funds. Originally written to help out third parties, the only parties that seem to be eligible are the Democrats and the Republicans which leads to more inequality in the system.
Second, repeal the XVIIth Amendment to allow a third party strong in a state to get appointed more easily (e.g. Vermont Progressive Party)
Third, reform campaign financing laws to reduce the advantages of incumbancy and soft funding (e.g. the party can make “issues” advertisements that do not count against a candidate)
Fourth, make it easier to form a third party and allow time for it to grow before determining if it should continue to exist. In my state (California), it is nearly impossible to start a new political party.
Lastly, maintaining the Electoral College is crucial. A third party that appeals across the country (like TR’s Progressive Party) may get enough middle-of-the-road votes to steal a few key states and a sectional party (like Wallace’s American Independant Party) may get a block of electoral votes so that in each case, the election goes to the House of Representatives where anything can happen. Let’s say the Know-Nothings make a comeback on an anti-immigration campaign and win the border states of CA, AZ, NM, TX, and FL. They would have 131 electoral votes with 407 left over of which a Demo or Rep would need 270 to win outright
I might be a bit biased because I grew up in a completely different political system but I think the most important condition for successful third parties is some form of proportional representation. Otherwise the danger is too great that you “throw away” your vote for a minor party. This just creates a vicious circle of people voting for the lesser evil among the big two while possible alternatives never gain a foothold.
Even with measures against extreme fragmentation (like that under the radical proportional representation of Weimar Germany) people here currently have a choice between five parties on the federal level where they can be reasonably sure that their vote won’t be in vain.
Most of the reforms you’ll see proposed here involve easier ballot access requirements for third parties. That’s a necessary first step, but only a first step. Third parties as enduring institutions* will never be viable in the U.S. without systemic electoral reforms, including:
*Such success as they do have has been compared to “the bee that stings and dies” – e.g., the Socialist Party saw some major planks of its platform adopted by FDR in the New Deal, after which the SP itself entered a sharp decline.
Well, here’s a system that would greatly increase the standing of third party candidates. Anyone within reason could put their name on the ballot. Each voter then chooses whether each candidate is acceptable or unacceptable to them. There are no restrictions; a voter may vote “acceptable” for as many candidates as he or she wants. The winner is the candidate who gets the most acceptable votes. Hence there would no longer be any worries about throwing away a vote on an obscure candidate.
Public financing of elections would help a lot. But the debates would have to be opened. How far is hard to say. Green party,Naders party, socialists…where do you stop.? New parties would come along too. These parties are the birth place of ideas. The old parties are too wrapped up by money and their self serving system.
Allow a voter to use thier vote to either vote for the best candidate, or against the worst candidate. Currently in order to vote against the candidate you really hate, you have to vote for the candidate most likely to beat them.
There’s really only one change that will make third parties viable in the long run, get rid of first-past-the-post or “single winner” voting systems. Without that, nothing else will really work.
In every country where FPTP has been used, over time, the trend is always towards fewer parties, and usually two parties.
It doesn’t necessarily guarantee two parties, but it usually does lead to a much smaller number of total parties and in Westminster style democracies it almost always leads to single party rule versus multi-party coalitions (I think the UK, which uses FPTP, has had a coalition government as a result of maybe two, possibly three elections since the early 20th century.)
Strong regional third parties can easily exist in a FPTP system. Several relatively short-term, but strong, American political parties existed as regional ones. Sometimes strong individuals or a strong set of issues can also result in an upsurge in the strength of a third party. The Constitutional Union Party enjoyed brief success prior to the Civil War because its message appealed to the border states that did not want war. The Progressive Party likewise gained some prestige and power around the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century.
However the fate of the Progressive Party is typical in a FPTP system, the mainstream parties eventually adopted most of the ideas of the Progressives essentially making them irrelevant as a separate party.
The issue I’m questioning is how much of the bias in favor of the Democrat/Republican domination of elections is due to the way the system is designed and how much of it is due to voter preference. I’ll make no secret of the fact that I’ve always believed that the failure of third parties in this country is 99% due to their failure to attract voters. Voters have always had the ability to vote for third parties and they have simply chosen not to.
But I’m open to arguments that I’m wrong and specific examples of procedures that would change the way people actually vote. Proportional representation seems to be a popular idea but can somebody explain why it would help third parties in this country? To use the 2006 election results as an example, based on their national percentages of the all votes, the Democrats would have gotten 226 seats in the House; the Republicans would have gotten 198; and all the other parties would have divided up the other eleven - a slight gain for third parties but not one that’s going to give them any control of the government.
There’s the New York method: Allow candidates to run for more than one party, and have the votes counted together. So the Pub candidate is the Right To Life candidate, and the Right To Life votes count for him… but they also count towards keeping the RTL party on the ballot.
Well, that’s a chicken-egg problem. Voters have always known a vote for a third party will almost certainly be wasted; most of them won’t consider it except in rare cases when they’re really fed up. We have never had a chance to see how Americans would vote in an election where a third-party choice was a realistic option.
No offense, but the question remains - why should we take steps to push third parties?
A slanted way of phrasing the question of the title is, how can we jigger the system to frustrate the will of the electorate?
Maybe parties other than the Republicans and Democrats can come up with candidates and positions that will make people want to vote for them. If they can’t (or won’t), why should the election system be changed to accomodate this?