This is a note to those who want third parties to get more equal footing — whether because they support the parties, or just support the fairness and democracy of it (I’m in the latter group).
I’ll mention but not discuss the advantages the two major parties have and have always had in our system. There are enormous advantages making a third-party win quite unlikely.
I mean, the system has unequal benefits beyond any political realities the third parties would have to overcome — the nature of the system has a huge weight for not splitting the vote.
The wrong way to fight for third parties: by voting for them.
If that sounds a bit strange, and anti-democracy, an inherent part of the problem is that there is a huge mountain for the third party, splitting the vote. What it means is that unlike in a normal election, where you need to get a plurality, the third party well past the point of winning a plurality is likely to still be splitting the vote of one side, and giving the election to the other side even if they could not win in a two-candidate election — as happened in the election of Woodrow Wilson when Teddy Roosevelt ran third party and split the vote (and less so but still the case when Ralph Nader ran in 2000 and helped George Bush ‘win' the election.)
Instead, the third party has to win by such a huge margin, they destroy the candidate closest to them so badly, that they get enough votes to split the vote and STILL beat the other side as well.
So, the vote for the third party might ‘send a message’, but that message is very ineffective; historically, the party that lost because of it doesn’t race to adopt the positions of the third party, but rather the other party simply benefits. For example, Democrats who didn’t support Hubert Humphrey and allowed Nixon to win didn’t see great things for their politics; Nixon was re-elected by 49 states as he caused great harm. Democrats didn’t benefit from Al Gore not being president; the Republicans did. So it sort of ‘sends a message’, but with a very high cost that’s not worth it.
So, what to do?
The right way to support third parties:
Fight for reform, state by state, supporting national organizations, in our election system. The key to the third parties getting equal footing — apart from a constitution-changing radical new system that’s not going to happen - is to adopt some form of "ranked voting".
That means basically, you vote for whoever you want — and if they do well, your vote counts for them — but you also vote for at least one ‘second choice’, and if your first choice doesn't get many votes, then your second choice still counts. So, for example, in 2000 you might have voted for Ralph Nader as your first choice and Al Gore your second.
This would have two effects. One, all the voters who preferred Nader but voted for Gore to block Bush, would have been free to vote for Nader — giving him a big boost and more equal footing.
Second, it would have then had all the Nader voters who preferred Gore over Bush as a second choice, would have had their votes count for Gore — and we’d have President-elect Gore in 2000.
Under our constitution, the rules for voting are set by the states for each state — so the way to get this changed is to fight for the states to do it.
It’s an uphill battle for a few reasons.
The current politicians asked to go along are almost always part of the two parties — they’re being asked to hurt their own re-elections.
The powerful interests who try to influence (sorry, massively DO influence almost entirely) our political system are likely to prefer the current two-party system, not a bunch of third parties.
Third, most voters support the two parties and are unlikely to get very supportive of the fairness to the third parties. And there’s a general resistance to change.
But votes for a Jill Stein, if they succeed in costing Hillary the election, are very likely to do nothing to help the agenda of the Stein voters — and only to harm them by electing trump.
But there is a legitimate issue to fight for more fairness for those third parties — and in my opinion we should all in the name of fairness and democracy support the ranked voting reform.
And I say that as someone who expects to keep voting for the Democratic Party, and against the third parties, even if these changes were in place. But I think it’s better democracy.