3rd parties

[ELITEOFKINGWARMAN8]

Why do people complain in the US about the big two parties, yet they don't join/vote for a 3rd party?


That is why I'm joining the Libertarian party this year.

[Gaidin]

Most are too specialized for my tastes.

[Darth Red]

No third parties. Based on the electoral college and the way the President gets elected, with a third party I can only invision that no canidate would get the 270 that are needed to win. Wouldn't that put the job of electing the president into the hands of the current legislators. That would be a terrible scenerio, in my opinion...

[Gaidin]

No third parties. Based on the electoral college and the way the President gets elected, with a third party I can only invision that no canidate would get the 270 that are needed to win. Wouldn't that put the job of electing the president into the hands of the current legislators. That would be a terrible scenerio, in my opinion...

On the bright side, there's actually a contingency for it...unlike most other scenarios. I actually like the idea of third parties, if there were one big enough that cared about more than one issue.

[Admiral Piett]

We need serious electoral reform first before any kind of multi-party system can bring about effective reforms and a change in the entire way our government operates.

Getting rid of the EC would help too.

[Darth Red]

I like the Electoral College just the way it is actually. Doesn't give one State with a large vote too much power to decide every election. This I believe is a good thing for the whole country, not just major metropolitan area's with large voting blocks. This the Founding Fathers got right.

I am not adverse to third parties, however. I would like to see them run and be accepted into the two major parties. IE a green party or progressive canidate should be allowed to run in a Democrat primary, just as say a Libertarian or Constitutionalist would run under a Republican nomination. That is something that each of those party leaders must accept, of course. So if a Libertarian runs and wins a primary for the Republican party, I would like to see Repubs not put forth thier own canidate and endorse the Libertarian and vice versa for the Dems...

[Gaidin]

It kind of defies the purpose of the parties then if you allow a third party to run in another party's primary. Granted I'm not one to care for the parties as an overall concept, but that's me. They'd have to register as and run as a republican to get into the party's primary votes. If you want to do anything with a 3rd party they'd have to be big enough to match the two big ones, and essentially have their own primary(assuming more than one candidate was up for nomination), and they could have their own convention, get on the primary ballots themselves.

[El Brujo]

Third parties are counterproductive. A strong Libertarian or Ross Perot type candidate will siphon of Republican votes and get a Democrat elected. Ralph Nader gave us George W. Bush. The parties know this and it's one of the reasons they frequently ignore their constituents.

A third party will become viable only when one of the two parties that exist now cracks and implodes.

[Darth Red]

It kind of defies the purpose of the parties then if you allow a third party to run in another party's primary...

Well, I can see why you would think that, but that isn't entirely true. Perhaps nothing more than a name change, say Liberal and Conservitive. The smaller individual factions would form smaller groups under the two big tents. I just would like to end up with only two canidates on the final ballot.

Just as El Brujo ponted out, Ross Perot should have run as the Republican nomination if he had beat out Bush Sr. amoung voting Conservitives. He didn't but ran anyway. All that did was play spolier to the Republican party and hand Clinton the general election. Same with Nader, if he had won the primary for the Democrats than Gore would/should have stepped aside. At this point all the other parties seem to play spoliers to the big two and really arn't viable options without the endorsements and war chests of the two.

It would be like Future Filmmaker running as a Libertarian and say me as a Republican. If he can get more conservitives to belive his more moderate approach will have more success winning a general election than my conservitive viewpoints, he wins the primary, all the Republicans should endorse that canidate. Chances are most of his views and ideology wouldn't be all that far off the core values of the Republican base anyway.

Just some rough idea's. I would just hate having four or five different canidates running in a general election. If it's a R vs D or Progressive vs Libertarian, whatever, so long as it's two...

[Gaidin]

The reason it's a bad idea at the current time is that the current rules are so heavily biased towards two candidates it's depressing. I haven't given any thought as to how, but rules could be rehashed so that it works for any number of candidates, be that 2 or 20.

[MathiasOfAthens]

I think if we had more parties in congress like in a parliament then more things would get done and there be less competition. .... But I don't see any likely hood of congressmen passing a bill that could technically make it less likely for their party to win so many seats next go-around.

[xcorps]

As Gaiden said, the current system is designed to prevent a third party from even having access to the ballots.

Just to get on the ballot, a party has to meet a number of criteria, including fees and petition requirements.

Not only are the laws discrimantory (in terms of access), and complicated, they vary from state to state. A grass roots party has little chance of meeting many of the requirements just to give voters the option to see their name in a national election, much less deliver a message that will actually garner votes.

The only way to change these laws would be to enact new legislation, and that'd be a difficult proposition, as what politician is going to vote on something that will reduce his chances of being elected?

[Gaidin]

The problem isn't that the rules for congress favor two parties. There's no rules about what the party make-up of congress has to be. They're directly elected from their districts. It's actually a lot easier for a 3rd party to win an election for something as local as a congressional district. Once the area expands to a full state, much less the country, it becomes harder because 90% of the 3rd parties in the country are so specialized or extreme that 99% of the population has no use for them.

[MathiasOfAthens]

Exactly, one possible benefit to our current system would have been used already. That is preventing a radical party from gaining national power. Our country was certainly more divided 100, 150 years ago. Could a multi party congress have defeated slavery, segregation, and overcome the depression without a American Nazi or Communist party takeover.

[Gaidin]

I'm not saying that the extreme 3rd Parties being left out is a bad thing so much as the (Presidential) race is set up so that even if there was a well-centralized 3rd party, it's still impossible for them.