Voter disaffection an opening for third party?

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Collins works on alternative; blasts D bill

Lessons of history
A non-presidential election year is a difficult time to launch or expand a third-party movement. That wasn’t always the case, says Richard Winger, an expert on election law and editor of Ballot Access News.

“Back in the days when the United States had more flexible laws, and powerful parties did arise from time to time, those developments usually happened in the middle of election years (even-numbered years),” Winger said.

He noted that in May of 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act which legalized slavery in territories which had formerly been closed to slavery. In response, a new party opposed to the extension of slavery, the Republican Party, was born on July 6, 1854.

The Republicans went on to win more House seats than any other party in the fall 1854 elections. And just six years later, a Republican presidential candidate -- Abraham Lincoln -- won the White House.

Getting on the ballot was easier in the early part of the 20^th century than it now is for new parties and their presidential candidates.

In 1912, former president Theodore Roosevelt, displeased with the policies of his successor, President William Howard Taft, waited until August to form a new party, the Progressive Party. Winger points out the Progressive Roosevelt still got on the ballot in 45 of the 48 states, won six states and won more popular votes than Taft. The Progressives elected nine House members.

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Restrictive ballot access laws and the mainstream news media’s near-exclusive focus on the two major parties make it hard for a third party to ignite an electoral prairie fire.

Comparison to 1990s
Assessing the current disaffection with the two parties, Rob Richie, executive director of a group called Fair Vote, the Center for Voting and Democracy, said, “as of now, there is nothing like the climate of 1990-1994 when Perot ran so well” and independents were elected as governors in Connecticut, Maine and Alaska.

But, he added, “That might change, particularly if someone like John McCain said he'd run as an independent rather than try to win the GOP nomination. But I think that a lot of ‘leaning’ independents (e.g., people who don't have great affection for either party, but really dislike one of the parties) see the choice between the major parties as significant enough that they don't want to ‘waste their vote’ on ‘spoilers.’”

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The biggest barrier third party candidates face, according to Richie, is the winner-take-all voting system which most states and cities use.

Richie’s group favors an instant runoff system in which voters would rank candidates in order of their preference. To win, a candidate would need to get a majority (50 percent plus one). If no majority winner emerged from the first round of voting, the top two candidates would go to a run-off in which voter’s second-choice preferences would determine the winner.

This would help third-party candidates such as Nader. A voter could back Nader in Round One, confident that if Nader lost, the voter’s vote in the instant runoff would be awarded to his second-choice candidate, likely a Democrat. No state has yet adopted such a system, although San Francisco and Burlington, Vt. have.

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