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Third-Party and Independent Ballot Status
jsrjsr writes "Ballot Access News reports on the number of states where various candidates will be on the ballot. The site also contains a wealth of news about ballot access and other election-related issues."
This brings up a very interesting point in the current American system... not all "democrats" agree with what the "Democratic Party" is doing, and likewise there are "republicans" who don't agree with the "Republican Party".
In fact, so called "529 groups" cannot speak to the main parties at all. They get their numerical name from the section that creates the loophole in the McCain-Finegold Campaign Finance Reform law that allows them to exist. The reform law was meant to end soft money, but really, it just sends the soft money to groups like "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" that exist to create attack ads that the main candidate and main party have no control over and therefore can deny association with.
Yes, democrats are trying to knock Nader off the ballot out of fear that his being there will distract votes from Kerry. However, it's also true that republicans are supporting Nader because they're hoping that Nader will distract votes from Kerry in close states letting Bush win those states.
The so called "media recount" of the 2000 Florida election actually discovered that there was a counting method that would have declared Gore the winner, however it wasn't the one that Gore had called for, and Gore still would have lost had Kathrine Harris not opened her office for a few minutes on a Saturday to certify the result forcing the incomplete counters to stop short. Yep, little things like the "butterfly ballot" actually mattered that time... it was so close the margin of error in our system showed up to cast uncertainty over the outcome..
The election of 1860 was an election had four candidates get electoral votes, but Lincoln was able to capture a majority by winning every one of the non-slave states.
Between the election and his swearing in seven of the states that didn't vote for him decided they wanted to rebel... and that's the path that led to something known as the Civil War.
In an email conversation with Richard Winger (who runs Ballot Access News and invests all his energy and resources into the effort of being the central repository of a very complex subject) he noted the inherent hypocrisy of the parties.
The Republican party was very hastily assembled and won a big election (1860) in very short order (just a few months of organization on the national level.) Under todays hugely complex ballot laws, that would have been simply impossible. (Ballot access laws came about with the secret ballot. Prior to the secret ballot, the state didn't print ballots at all, and candidates did not register themselves with the state for an election. They just started campaigning, and people wrote the candidate's names down, or they brought candidate lists with them to the polling place and dropped them into the box. Essentially, *everyone* was a write-in candidate. The secret ballot made pre-printing necessary and therefore candidate pre-registration, and now we have a very technical system for keeping undesireables off the ballot.)
Winger does imply that there may be a federal ballot access system setup in the future, but I don't know how far off that is, nor how fair it would be for third parties.
We're darn close with term limits of two terms on President and many other officials (the Governator?).
:)
And the parties continue to thrive. Remember - most people don't think a damn about politics; they vote for the candidate from the party they support.
So if there were term limits, party affiliation would become even more important. For example; you know things about Bush because he is POTUS. We know things about Kerry because he's a Senator.
But if term limits are one term, then the endorsement of the party will become the defining factor. As it is currently, you can find people who are elected time and time again to their position but actually begin to change what they think about things, and their constituents continue to vote for them because they trust them.
Also, politicians who have a chance of being reelected will keep an eye on the will of the people; single term limits would turn every single term into a lame duck term. Assuming you're anti-Bush, do you think he would have acted differently if he knew there was no way for him to be re-elected? Perhaps not, if he valued his party.
Then again, remember that I think one of the worst things that happened to the US was direct election of Senators. We should do our best to keep a Republic to prevent tyranny of the majority.
My personal take on it: the House of Representatives should be doubled or more. That way there is a much larger chance that third or fourth party candidates can get in. That's where the revolution will start.
However, if the Democrats manage to seize defeat from the jaws of victory in this election (they have everything you could ask for in an opponent: hated, deficit, etc, and are neck and neck.) , then you may be seeing the beginning of the death of the Democratic party as it is currently known. The Federalist party died in a similar manner (if I remember correctly). And many have commented that the Republicans are moving left in some things: who enacted Medicare prescription benefits: Bush or Clinton?
Now as to other commentary: A vote for a third party candidate can only be considered throwing away your vote if you're voting against a candidate. For example, a vote for Nader can only be considered throwing away your vote if you are voting against Bush.
And voting for a third party candidate is much better than not voting at all: the third party vote announces to the world that there are issues that are important to you that the main candidates do not discuss. Not voting announces to the world that you are watching American Idol or something else. Any number of things can cause someone not to vote, but definite agreement with the candidate causes someone to vote third party.
Wow! Long post.
Fellowship 9/11
I love how these so-called non-partisan laws are used to challenge 3-parties while the majors get their way. In Illinois these laws state qualifying names must be submitted by August 30. The Republican convention was held in Sept. If these laws were equally applied to the Majors, Dubya would not be on the ballot.
An even more disgusting example was in 2002, where Sen. Robert Toricelli, in the middle of a large scandal, decided--after his name was placed on the ballot--that he was going to drop out of the race. The democrats decided to change the name on the ballot (because no one wanted to vote for Toricelli) in violation of NJ state election law.
The NJ Supreme Court let them get away with it, on the basis that "the people have a right to have viable candidates from both parties on the ballot."
The phrase "both parties" is quite telling, don't you think?
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
The major flaw was that national elections are held on a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all basis. Which means that if three or more candidates compete in a race, it's virtually guaranteed that somebody with less than a majority of the vote will end up winning political power. The result of this flaw is non-democratic minority rule, instead of the democratic ideal of majority rule.
... The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished..."
A good example of this happened in the 2002 election in my state of Vermont, where the Republican candidates became Governor and Lieutenant Governor with 45 percent and 41 percent of the vote respectively because each had more votes than his Democratic or Progressive opponents alone. (Example: Republican Brian Dubie - 41%; Democrat Peter Shumlin - 32%; Progressive Anthony Pollina - 25%. The Republican "won.") The majority of Vermont voters selected liberal or progressive candidates, but conservatives are in charge of the state - the exact anti-democratic result that gave some of the Framers nightmares.
James Madison was the most outspokenly worried about this. In the 1787 Federalist #10, he goes into a lengthy discussion of the danger of "factions" - one aspect of what we today call political parties - emerging. First he puts a good face on the problem, suggesting that the new Constitution will solve the "violence" done to democracy by factions. But in the next sentence, he admits his fear that he and the other Framers had not truly solved the problem of what would happen if "factions" were to emerge.
"Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union [based on the Constitution], none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction," wrote Madison. "The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice.
The problem was that if factions were to emerge as political parties, it would mean there could only be two of them, for if more than two parties emerged then the majority of people would almost always remain unrepresented, while the most well-organized minority would end up ruling.
Madison concluded by saying he felt the Constitution he and Hamilton were promoting with the Federalist Papers was the best solution they could come up with to solve the problem of factions.
But, as he noted, the constitution wasn't perfect: "The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger [of factions] on this side, as was wished and expected." His only solution was to beg Americans not to form factions.
Although George Washington was soon thereafter elected unanimously and by acclimation, America's second presidential election (won by John Adams) almost immediately led to the creation of Madison's feared "factions" in the form of Vice-President Thomas Jefferson's "Democratic-Republican" party (today called the "Democratic Party"). Ever since then, we've largely been a two-party nation - because our Constitution is written in a way that causes anything else to result in the least democratic outcome to an election.
Most of the rest of the world, however, has learned from our mistake and taken a different path.
Of the 86 other "fully democratic" nations in the world (according to the UN), only a few like Greece and Australia had repeated our mistake, although Australia solved the problem with a national variation on what in America is called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), where you select your first, second, third, etc., preference among candidates, and if there's no majority winner, the "instant runoff" is instantl