[smacintush]

I know that this is a subject that comes up occasionally but it has been on my mind lately.

Something I hear a lot is; "Why can't we have more than two parties?" One guy went on about this being America and we can have hundreds of choices of cereal but only two choices of political parties.

Anyway, doesn't the viability of a third or fourth or fifth party start with us? How many people are out there waiting for another major party to magically rise up out of the primordial ooze?

I guess what I want to ask is, how do you feel about third+ parties or those other parties in specificity, and what have you done about it?

I personally am more and more alone in elections. My views have been shifting more and more to the big L and they just aren't that popular. On one hand I feel like I should get active in promoting the Libertarian party on a local and state level, on the other hand I feel like it's hopeless and no one wants that kind of liberty and I wouldn't be able to make a difference anyway.

What do you think?

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

It's all a dog and pony show.

If there was a third party that rose to any level of power to match the Dems or the Repubs, then they'd simply become some variation of the same exact thing. Just a name will have changed, and some level of splintering will have occurred. Big whoop.

I'm probably one of the few that thinks two parties that at least have the effect of being motivated to somewhat check the other, is probably about as 'advanced' as the political process will ever get. Just having a bunch of splintered, weaker parties with colorful sounding labels running around getting up to as much bullshit as their powerbase allows them, won't actually change anything other than the labels.

Yes, everything will just be hunky dory if political hacks can rally around the Libertarian Democracy Labor Party vs the Socialist Green Save the Globe Party vs. the National Reform Independents... or, it'll really just be the same stupid ****, with a bunch of different-sounding teams playing ball.

[subego]

I think the Libertarian party hasn't quite hit that critical mass point where the normal folk properly outnumber the whack jobs.

[smacintush]

Originally Posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE 

It's all a dog and pony show.

If there was a third party that rose to any level of power to match the Dems or the Repubs, then they'd simply become some variation of the same exact thing. Just a name will have changed, and some level of splintering will have occurred. Big whoop.

I'm probably one of the few that thinks two parties that at least have the effect of being motivated to somewhat check the other, is probably about as 'advanced' as the political process will ever get. Just having a bunch of splintered, weaker parties with colorful sounding labels running around getting up to as much bullshit as their powerbase allows them, won't actually change anything other than the labels.

Yes, everything will just be hunky dory if political hacks can rally around the Libertarian Democracy Labor Party vs the Socialist Green Save the Globe Party vs. the National Reform Independents... or, it'll really just be the same stupid ****, with a bunch of different-sounding teams playing ball.

I don't know CRASH, you may be right but neither of those parties represent my views. What are people like me supposed to do? Grin and bear it? It seems obvious to me that a lot of people are getting tired of the crap that our government is doing but neither party is the party that will try to really change anything.

[Doofy]

How about no parties at all?
Except the ones where you get raging drunk and naked girls dance on your coffee table, obviously.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

If there were no parties at all, then there'd be absolutely NO incentive for any of these twits to ever even disclose half the new levels of corruption they'd then get up to. At least Dems will always snitch on Repubs and vica versa, not because either really give a good crap about disclosing the real behind the scenes corruption going on, but to embarrass the other guy's team.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Originally Posted by smacintush 

I don't know CRASH, you may be right but neither of those parties represent my views. What are people like me supposed to do? Grin and bear it? It seems obvious to me that a lot of people are getting tired of the crap that our government is doing but neither party is the party that will try to really change anything.

If you and I somehow had the "perfect" government that represented our goals to perfection (speaking for myself, that'd be a government that's small, stays the hell out of my way and my wallet, and does ONLY what its charged with in the Constitution) then there'd be groups screaming bloody murder over it.

They'd be insisting that they were living under the worst tyranny ever seen, demanding "change" and "hope" and their 'right' to have the old big government nanny state restored, and believing just as fervently as you do now, that the system is hopelessly broken, doesn't represent them, desperately needs new and better political parties, and some mythical crop of better, more qualified politicians and on and on.

There's just never going to come a time when everything isn't 'broken' and in need of 'change', and never a time when everybody feels their views are fully represented.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by CRASH HARDDRIVE 

If there were no parties at all, then there'd be absolutely NO incentive for any of these twits to ever even disclose half the new levels of corruption they'd then get up to.

Other than the newbies constantly digging dirt on the incumbents in the hope of getting rid of them so they can have their jobs, you mean?

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by smacintush 

I don't know CRASH, you may be right but neither of those parties represent my views. What are people like me supposed to do? Grin and bear it? It seems obvious to me that a lot of people are getting tired of the crap that our government is doing but neither party is the party that will try to really change anything.

The problem is that our country is so big, that to have any electoral success at all, parties need to appeal to a broad audience. Thus, there will never a viable party that will represent *your* views. The only way to have a viable 3+ party system would be to eliminate the winner-take-all, first-past-the-post system and adopt proportional representation.

[Dakar V]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey 

The only way to have a viable 3+ party system would be to eliminate the winner-take-all, first-past-the-post system and adopt proportional representation.

Bingo.

[nonhuman]

The problem with third parties is that, due to the strength of the two major parties, most people don't see them as viable choices. As a result they attract mostly fringe weirdos who end up driving them out to the extremes. This can be easily seen when considering the case of the Libertarians. There are quite a lot of people out there in both of the major parties who hold viewpoints that would otherwise be considered libertarian. But since they can find candidates in their party of choice that at least lean in the libertarian direction they stick with that party. The only people who actually go Libertarian are the fringe weirdos who end up nominating crackpots like Badnarik and Barr, despite the availability of more reasonable and more electable (and more libertarian!) candidates.

Really the issue is with the way our system works. I think we need to make modifications that would encourage third party participation and power. A form of modified parliamentarianism, I think, could work well in the American system. It would obviously require some constitutional amendments but if we, for example, made the 'prime minister' the Vice President very little would actually change in terms of the structure of power. I do think that in such a case the VP probably shouldn't ascend to President in the event of whatever, but instead to interim President while a new President is nominated and elected (which could, of course, be the VP). I've got more thoughts on the issue, but this isn't really the place and I'm not really sober.

[vmarks]

It's more than that - the two stronger parties 'reach across the aisle' and conspire to make ballot access restrictions so difficult that the only folks who can consistently get on the ballot are from the two stronger parties.

The burdens tend to be based on signature campaigns, where the other parties invalidate signatures that are legitimate, require X amount of cash to have been raised, and the signatures need to be a number multiplied by the percentage of vote the party got in a national campaign. Oh, and if the party didn't have a candidate on the ballot in the last national race, it's almost a non-starter. Isn't it nice how the rules are set so that the only parties which may be on a ballot are the parties which are already on the ballot?

This varies by locale, but is true in part for most places.

[Chuckit]

The thing is, in order to make the third party "start with me," I'd have to essentially become a sacrificial lamb. Third parties have no political power, and I have no political power personally, so I'd essentially be putting in a lot of work just to count myself out of the political process altogether. It's easier to push the real parties in a given direction than to create a new one out of whole cloth, so most people don't even try.

The only third party that has had a chance in the past century was formed by a very popular Republican ex-president — and even they lost. I think that's the only way we'll ever get a viable third party: if somebody rises to prominence and then builds a party around himself.