Yes

by Stephen Pate

Created on: December 06, 2009   Last Updated: December 07, 2009

Is the U.S. ready for a viable third party? In a word, yes. However, I think the U.S. is ready for a viable fourth and fifth and sixth party as well. To think that the whole of American political belief can be summed up in three parties is almost as naive as thinking that it can be summed up in two parties.

Considering the turbulent political landscape in the U.S. going on currently, I think we need an electoral system that better allows the election of multiple parties.

The evidence of this is most apparent when you consider the current state of the Republican Party right now. During the 2008 Presidential election, the GOP ticket was split along ideological lines. John McCain, the Presidential candidate, represented the libertarian wing of the GOP, which is more pro-choice and more favorable to drug decriminalization.

His Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, represented the Christian conservative wing of the GOP, which is adamantly pro-life. It was hoped that this would band the conservatives of the United States together and keep a Republican in the White House.

But it didn't happen. Christian conservatives did not like McCain's soft stand on abortion and religious issues. Liberal and libertarian Republicans did not trust Sarah Palin to be experienced enough in complex issues to serve as Vice President to a man as old as McCain. This rift within the Republican Party did not garner enough trust in American voters to get them elected.

This split between liberal and conservative Republicans was shown once again in New York's 23rd congressional district special election that took place in 2009. New York's 23rd district is a conservative cornerstone for Republicans.

Most of the area of NY-23 has not been represented by since the 1800's. In the 2008 congressional elections, John M. McHugh, a moderate Republican, was elected to represent NY-23.

After Obama took office after the 2008 presidential election, he nominated McHugh to serve in his administration as the Secretary of the Army. McHugh was confirmed by the Senate, and New York governor David Paterson set a date for an election to fill the vacancy for November 3, 2009.

There would be no primary election for the candidates. Instead, party leaders of the county that made up the district would choose their party candidates.

Bill Owens was chosen as the Democratic candidate while Dierdre Scozzafava was chosen as the Republican candidate. However, New York is known for having many independent parties run in elections. The Conservative Party of New York nominated Doug Hoffman.

When Scozzafava was nominated, many of the local Republicans did not like her as a candidate. She's pro-choice and for same-sex marriages and has ties to organized labor. However, she opposes gun control, is against cap-and-trade, and favors maintaining the Bush tax cuts.

Because of her stance on abortion and same-sex marriages, many of the district's conservative voters did not feel that she was conservative enough. This caused the prominence of Hoffman's candidacy for the Conservative Party of New York to rise. On issues, he is pro-life, against same-sex marriage, and supports other conservative issues.

The candidacies of Scozzafava and Hoffman caused a split between moderate-liberal Republicans and conservative Republicans. Both candidates received endorsements from other Republican political figures. As the campaign went on, though, Scozzafava was losing Republican support to the Conservative Party. Three days before the election, she pulled out of the race, but endorsed Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate.

On election day, Bill Owens received 68,963 (48.7%) votes, Dough Hoffman received 65,787 (46.4%) votes, and Dierdre Scozzafava received 6,903 (4.9%) votes because her name was still on the ballot.

Bill Owens was elected to go to the House of Representatives for New York's 23rd congressional district. He received the most votes, and so he won the seat, allowing a Democrat to represent that area for the first time in a century.

But if you look closely you'll notice that Owens did not receive the majority of votes. He only won 48.7% of the votes. If the GOP and the Conservative Party didn't compete for the seat, a single conservative candidate would have gotten 51.3% of the votes, 46.4% from Hoffman's votes and 4.8% from Scozzafava's votes.

Clearly, the voters of NY-23 wanted a conservative candidate but because of our electoral system, in which the receiver of the most votes wins the elected seat, the ticket was split and a liberal politician now represents a district where 51.3% of the voters are conservative.

This clearly shows a problem with our electoral system. It is so easy for different factions of liberal or conservative wing to split the vote and cause the election to be won by a unified opposition. This is why the United States has a two-party system.

It is not because it is mandated anywhere in our Constitution or in our laws. It develops naturally from a winner-take-all electoral system, and is called Duverger's Law.

Duverger's Law states that in a winner-take-all electoral system, a two-party system with broad platforms will naturally occur. This is because those seeking office require the most votes to gain office. A two-party system with a large number of factions working with each other to prevent their opponents from gaining office is what evolves.

This is why we have capitalist business interests in the same party as religious conservatives, or unionized labor in the same party as environmental interests. If they didn't join together politically they would never get their members voted into office.

So if our electoral system is the reason why we are forced into a two-party system and if we are dissatisfied with the two-party system then the obvious thing to do is to change our electoral system to one that allows for a multi-party system.

There are a number of electoral systems that can do this. The one that is probably the best for the United States would be a system called Instant Run-off Voting.

With Instant Run-off Voting, or IRV, voters rank the candidates they prefer. If, after being tallied once, none of the first choices gain a majority of votes then whoever has the least votes loses those votes and the second choices for those ballots gets the vote.

This process of elimination continues until one of the candidates get a majority of votes. This is an extremely simple electoral method that allows for multiple parties.

For instance, if the NY-23 special election was done using IRV, Bill Owens would have received 68,963 (48.7%) votes, Doug Hoffman would have received 65,787 (46.4%) votes, and Dierdre Scozzafava would have received 6,903 (4.9%) votes in the first round. But because neither Owens nor Hoffman would have the majority (50% +1) of the votes and Scozzafava received the least amount of votes, her votes would go to either Owens or Hoffman.

All of the ballots that ranked her as the first choice but had Owen as second choice would go to Owen, while all of the ballots that ranked her as the first choice but had Hoffman as second choice would go to Hoffman. This way, either Owens or Hoffman would get the support of not only voters who ranked them as first choice but also voters who ranked them as second choice and be elected to office on that mandate.

This is much more democratic than a liberal candidate being voted into office because of a conservative split in a district where the majority is conservative.

This electoral process allows multiple candidates to run for office with a chance of winning. This, in turn allows, multiple parties to nominate their candidates with a chance of winning. Multiple parties will give voters more options in the candidates they vote for and will cause more satisfaction in voting.

IRV will also help stabilize American politics. With the two-party system, we have a pendulum swing in politics. Stances on political issues swing back and forth within the space of a few years on which party comes into power. But with IRV, it's not just your first choice that counts. It's your second and third choices too.

Rather than nominating polarizing party candidates, more moderate compromise candidates will be elected into office. This will stabilize American political thought and help prevent hostile partisan politics.

Because multiple parties will become viable with an IRV system, it will be difficult for any one party to gain control of Congress. One party can't just push legislation through. Parties elected to Congress will have to form coalitions in order to get the number of votes to get legislation passed.

This means that if a coalition tries to go to far with it's power, a party in that coalition can withdraw it's support. Majorities in Congress won't retain power until congressional elections come up. Instead, majorities in Congress last only as long as the coalition lasts.

A ruling coalition could lose power between elections if their actions are unpopular enough. This would make power in Congress much more timely, a proposition that those jaded by our Congressmen and Senators will appreciate.

Because Congress will only be able to get legislation passed through coalitions in a multiple-party system, it would allow the factions that make up the Republican and Democratic parties to break up and become parties in their own right.

This would mean that economic conservatives would not have to vote alongside religious conservatives all the time, or labor unions would not have to vote alongside environmentalists all the time. The different parties could make coalitions based on the political needs of the time.

Ever since political commentators came up with the terms RINO and DINO, or Republican/Democrat In Name Only, much criticism has been laid on those politicians who do not follow the entirety of the party platform.

This was the problem that John McCain and Diedre Scozzafava encountered in their campaigns as liberal-moderate Republicans. Because they were pro-choice and for same-sex marriages, the conservative base criticized them heavily despite being relatively conservative on other issues.

The amount of backlash against Republican politicians who do not follow the entirety of the platform has become so great that members of the Republican Party has proposed a purity test in which a Republican candidate must agree to 8 out of 10 planks of the platform in order to be considered.

As explained above, this would result in many electoral losses for the Republican Party for the sake of ideological purity. In a winner-take-all system, the purpose is to get the most votes in order to get elected. This is why two very broad political parties are best for a winner-take-all system, where ideological purity is compromised so that more votes may be gained.

If ideological purity is to be kept, an electoral system that allows a multitude of parties must be implemented. This way, a party for religious conservatives and a separate party for economic conservatives may be viable.

Considering the backlash of conservatives against the Bush administration, the rise of tea parties that espouse more libertarian ideals, and the grow split between economic conservatives and religious conservatives, I absolutely believe that the U.S. is ready for viable multiple parties.

However, the only way that multiple parties will become viable is through a change in our electoral system, as electoral systems determines which political party system evolves from it to take the most advantage of how people vote.

Change the voting system and you change how many political parties can get votes. Otherwise, you won't make third parties viable. You'll just be helping a different second party to emerge.

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