On the history of 3rd parties
+gay twitter's unimaginative olympic thirst-trapping
Thanks to those of you who told us why you’re voting 3rd party. We’ll be publishing your responses next week.
For now, we’ll share Stephen’s hot takes on gay twitter’s infantile thirst-trap memes of olympic athletes from his newsletter at :
Among the Olympics content I was barraged with on my feeds were embarrassingly infantile posts fawning over several “distractingly gorgeous” athletes. A slew of Olympian thirst-trap memes made their way around social media platforms, with “Gay Twitter” being the worst offender. Perhaps what scandalizes me most about the 2024 Olympics is not its blasphemy or immorality, but how it highlights the dreadful impoverishment of our collective imagination. At least the self-indulgence of the ancient Greeks and figures like Wilde was enshrouded in an aesthetically rich, cosmically charged ethos. In our age of simulations, we’ve lost any sense of grandeur, so much so that even expressions of lust have become boring and predictable.
And check out Stephen’s piece in CWR on the history of 3rd parties:
What’s known as the “two party system” emerged in 1796, the year when, according to the Independence Hall Association, candidates ran “as members of organized political parties that held strongly opposed political principles.” Federalist candidate John Adams and Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson took sharply opposing views toward the Constitution and the future of the Revolution. In his 1796 farewell address, George Washington (who ran for president as an independent) warned that political parties
may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
The Democratic-Republicans evolved into the Democratic Party in the 1830s. And it wasn’t until 1854 that the Republican Party emerged on the main political stage when they opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would allow for the expansion of slavery in new Western states. These two parties have come to dominate US presidential elections since the 1850s (the last non-Democratic/Republican president was Whig candidate Millard Filmore whose term ended in 1853).
Since then, third or “minor” parties have garnered few votes, with exceptions in 1912, 1992, and 1996. In 1912, former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt ran for a third time on the Progressive (“Bull Moose”) Party ticket winning 27.4 percent of the vote, and Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs won 6 percent. Reform Party candidate Ross Perot ran the most successful third party campaigns in 1992 and 1996, winning 18.7 and 9.2 percent of the vote, respectively.
Some blame candidates like Perot, who drew votes equally from Democrats and Republicans, for “spoiling” the election for one of the major party candidates. But for some third party candidate supporters, this is seen as a useful strategy to pressure Democrats and Republicans to reconsider their platforms. In both years, Bill Clinton won with less than 50% of the vote.
Generally, candidates can either be written in, run independently, or be nominated by party delegates at a national convention. Ballot access laws vary by state. To run as a candidate for a political party, some states, such as New Jersey and New Hampshire, require a certain amount of votes in previous elections. Party candidates who don’t meet the qualifications can either run independently or be written in. Other states, such as Vermont, distinguish between major and minor party candidates, and have different requirements for each. Most states require a minimum amount of elector votes to make it onto the general election ballot. And while most states have few restrictions on candidates being written in, some, such as Colorado, require a candidate to file an affidavit of intent to be considered for the write in.
Some believe that reforms to our electoral system, like ranked choice voting (RCV), would help minimize the barriers faced by third party candidates. Members of nonpartisan electoral reform advocacy group FairVote think the US would be better off with RCV, which is already used for down-ballot elections in some states, because it “allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, and then uses those rankings to elect candidates who best represent their constituents…Voters can rank as many candidates as they want, without fear that ranking others will hurt the chances of their favorite candidate.” FairVote argues that RCV would promote majority vote, discourage negative campaigning, and provide more choice for voters.
Others point to the fact that a candidate must at least 15% in pre-election polls to participate in presidential debates. Members of Level the Playing Field, a nonprofit group consisting mostly of Green and Libertarian party members, lost a case this past June against the Federal Election Commission in the DC Circuit Court that aimed to challenge the 15% minimum requirement. Judge Raymond Randall wrote in the Court’s opinion that, “There is no legal requirement that the commission make it easier for independent candidates to run for president of the United States.” It is most often the case that third party candidates will debate each other separately from Republican and Democratic candidates.
There are at least 17 presidential candidates running on third party tickets in the 2020 election. Among the better known are the Green Party, which is noted for its socialism and commitment to environmentalism, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Libertarian party, and the centrist Alliance Party. The paleoconservative Constitution Party and more centrist American Solidarity Party (ASP) (whose platform is based on Catholic Social Teaching and aims to model the Christian Democratic parties that emerged in Europe during the 1990s), claim Christianity as central to their platforms, as well as Kanye West’s Birthday Party.
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