Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

Third party candidates success stunted by unprecedented challenges to even appearing on ballots. In a new Ballot Access News post by election reform and ballot access expert Richard Winger, “Real Clear Politics Article Surveys Difficulties for New Political Party Success in the U.S.“, the difficulties facing candidates who run without Democratic or Republican Party support are shown to have grown in recent years. From the article:

Scott Conroy, a national politics reporter for Real Clear Politics, has this article about why it is so difficult for a new political party in the United States to take root, even when there is widespread antipathy for each of the two older major parties. Conroy was a network TV reporter in 2012 who covered the Mitt Romney presidential campaign full-time.

The Real Clear Politics article had more information about other efforts to break into national politics and their conclusion is that today’s Presidential race at least is only accessible to those few who can fund their own campaigns – roughly $30 million to start based on Real Clear Politics’ guess.

According to Kellen Arno, who was national field director at Americans Elect, an organization that tried and failed to support third party candidates in 2012, ““if Michael Bloomberg decided today he wanted to run for president, he wouldn’t lose because he couldn’t get on the ballot”. Money is the key factor in gaining entrance. Another good quote comes from K. Sabeel Rahman, a Reginald Lewis Fellow at Harvard Law School, who advocates for radical reform:

“Our winner-take-all electoral system is hostile terrain for viable third parties,” explained Rahman, whose area of interest is democratic institutional reform. “In a system where there is only one elected representative per district, where that representative is chosen based on winning the most votes, and where the executive is elected separately from the legislature, the odds of winning actual political power are stacked in favor of big-tent parties.”

Also, another post on Ballot Access News, “Neil Cavuto Interviews Joe Lieberman on Fox Business News on Whether an Independent Could Win Presidential Race“, speaks about the impact of independents in Presidential contests:

See this four-minute televised conversation between Fox Business Network host Neil Cavuto and former U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, on whether an independent or new party candidate could win the presidency in 2016. Lieberman raises the possibility that even if such a candidate would not win, he or she would influence public policy.