[Homestead] Where are the third party candidates?
Marie McHarry
mmcharry at gmail.com
Fri Oct 3 00:38:11 EDT 2008
On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 6:37 AM, Lynn Wigglesworth <lynnw1366 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> If ever there was a time to organize the disenfranchised rabble, this is
> it. Why aren't the third party candidates out whipping up the masses?
>
Well.......... there's a couple of things. You don't gin up a third
(or fourth or fifth) party during a presidential election year. You
start out with small groups and build on that, usually for several
years. You get your people elected to Congress. No president could run
the country without his or her people in the legislature.
And, another thing, you will never get a third party candidate elected
until you have proportional, aka instant runoff, voting. Until that
happens, voting for a third party candidate pretty much assures that
you will effectively elect one of the two major candidates. The
Founders saw the danger of political parties but, smart as they were,
they put a government into place that ensure a two-party system.
Of course, that's why we can amend the Constitution. And, of course,
making that change will be hard because it immediately threatens
incumbents.
If you could vote for Your Perfect Candidate with either the R or D as
the second choice with the assurance that if your guy got only 4
percent of the vote your vote would go to your second choice, wouldn't
you, not to mention a huge number of your fellow Americans, be a lot
more likely to vote for your first choice?
It ain't rocket science, but getting there will be incredibly hard work.
Marie
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