As the 2016 Presidential Election transpired in the most uneasy way imaginable, predictions began to show accumulating appeal for the leading third party nominees, Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party. This occurrence is not unusual in the early months of presidential elections, especially when there is a large feeling of disappointment with both major party candidates coming from their supporters as explained on the Observer, “…even when the ‘other choice’ has a high appeal, the U.S. political system never sees them as the winner.” (Malice). What appeared to be strange was the extent of the distrust and disgust with competitors Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton; and additionally how the two most statistically undesirable candidates managed to win the Republican and Democratic primary elections to represent their parties. A simple solution to present to perplexed voters is to encourage third party candidates, as these nominees are typically somewhat astray from the major party candidate on the shared side of the political spectrum, right? Not exactly, which addresses to the initial confusion of the election results, and the eagerness to know how and why minor parties still experienced the typical decline in support as the most controversial approached election day. The plurality voting system practiced plus the prominence of the Electoral College essentially creates a two-party dominance among the competition. The American political system built on plurality voting is constitutionally composed in a way that creates static opinions which can be explained by Duverger’s Law, the basis behind the anti-vote idea; contrastingly, there are adjustable circumstances that create barriers to funding, debates, and ballot access for minor parties which introduces many reform notions that have been introduced to address these issues both on the big and small scale. 

“The necessity of getting an absolute majority in the Electoral College is the main thing that has made third parties unviable in America. In practice, it is impossible for a third party to ever elect a president, which might be possible if the president was elected by popular vote or by plurality of the Electoral College.” (Bartlett). The Electoral College was introduced during the creating of the Constitution as the one compromise that finally made the Constitutional Convention come to an agreement. The constitution states what kind of person electors cannot be as, “it prohibits senators, representatives, and persons holding an ‘Office of Trustor Profit under the United States’ from serving.” (Supreme Court Debates). However, since the establishment of the institution, the practices of the electors have become what some consider corrupt and fraudulent. Being that the original document of the institutions role in the election was vague and only in place as a conciliation, there has since been much development that many see as gone in the wrong direction. Additionally, the initial purpose of the electors was to ratify the voters’, and in recent it has been expressed that these elected officials are qualified make their own exceptions to this rule. 

The United States is considered to be a federal republic comparable to many other established countries that share similar socioeconomic climates. The structure of this system that so many developed countries have adopted face the near inevitability of two-party dominance due to plurality that authors Steven Callander and Catherine Wilson directly link to Duverger’s Law, “Duverger treated his law merely as an important tendency but insisted that social forces are the main determinants of the number of political parties.” (Maskarinec). Plurality voting can be defined as a “winner takes all” because the votes ability to be split among numerous candidates. However, since third parties never seem to gain support from the electors, the electoral votes are decided on a majority basis where the winning candidate must receive more than 50 percent of the votes. Maurice Duverger’s now well-known theory makes the claim that single-member plurality systems tend to elevate the two overshadowing parties causing under-representation creating the third parties’ lack of support and ultimately the unlikelihood of these minor parties to gain followers.

“Political scientists have long recognized that the number of parties in a country influences the way that interests are represented in that country. One explanation for the number of parties in a system relies on the idea of strategic voting, i.e. voters may not want to ‘waste a vote’ by voting for a third party.” (Clough). Strategic voting is a psychological effect brought on from Duverger’s Law, which is commonly heard to be known as “anti-voting” or the idea of supporting the lesser of two evils. Since plurality voting nearly promises a major-party success, it has since been considered that any other candidate not running for a reigning party is a wasted vote, “When you vote third party, you are taking away votes from a candidate that actually stands a chance of winning. You might not agree with how your ‘second choice candidate’ conducts themselves. You might not agree with every single talking point they have, but that's politics. There will never be a perfect candidate for you. There will never be a politician who says all the things you deem "right." The very nature of politics is that it is a system of governing designed by people, who are flawed and intrinsically imperfect.” (Hermani). This observation leads to the competitive human nature to practice the action of voting AGAINST the candidate who you do not favor, instead of voting for candidates-potentially of a minor party, that a person may politically agree more with, which is summarized in a polling among voters shown in figure1. This is due to fear among persons on the left versus right of the political spectrum, who are applying the idea of anti-voting in hopes to band together with voters who have similar views to keep the competing candidate with completely opposing views from holding office. 

(figure 1)

As for barriers other than psychological effects that are difficult to battle against, the minor parties run into obstacles put forth by individuals, organizations, and ultimately governing bodies that are attempting to keep third parties and their candidates away from their political monopoly. Seeing as though most government officials who could potentially have the power to battle these restrictions are those that identify with the Republican or Democratic parties, the importance and urgency of the matter is perhaps not great. Whether it be government regulations set forth to make it difficult to qualify for funding, laws in place that restrict the appearance on the ballot to promote monopoly among the parties, or specifically significant organizations requiring purposely unattainable prerequisites to participate in events; third parties are experience a decline in support and it is due to not being able to afford a loud enough platform to even attempt to receive the necessary followers to qualify for said events.

Major party candidates typically receive a hefty amount of donations that they heavily rely on to run their campaign and attract attention to their platforms, unless you’re Donald Trump who self-funded nearly half of his campaign in 2016, as seen in figure 2. However, third party candidates are seen to receive insignificant funding from current supporters to even compare to that of the leading party candidates, shown in figure 3. However, the government offers a solution to this dilemma, only with a catch; for a candidate to be eligible for federal funding, they would have had to receive at least five percent of the national vote in the previous election. This is completely useless to say Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party candidate, who was receiving high levels of support during the recent election, however could not even apply to receive funding for his platform.

 

(figure 2)(figure 3)

In addition to the governments demand of challenging requirements to receive funding, organizations such as the Commission of Presidential Debates (CPD) put forth prerequisites that any candidate desiring to partake in must meet. The Commission of Presidential Debates was originally founded in 1985 by the Democratic and Republican Nationals Chairmen who signed an agreement to make their respective parties the principal sponsors of the debates held for the general election campaign. The current co-chairmen are the reigning chairmen of the two main political parties. As for the qualifying criteria for the presidential debates, the initially difficult condition the Commission of Presidential Debates has set is the requirement of the parties interested in participation to having received 15 percent support in multiple polls to qualify for the event. This limiting circumstance the debates put forth protests coming third party supporters and candidates and on multiple occasions even required actions of law enforcement to step in. Jill Stein and her vice-presidential candidate of the Green Party were recently arrested in 2012 following their hours of detainment after their refusal to leave the presidential debate of Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney. The participation of third party candidates in these debates is crucial to expanding their platform and the requirements set forward to be able to participate are extremely unfair as the commission must know that the involvement in this specific event would be the way that the parties would gain the level of support that is required to partake. Furtherly analyzed in Case Western Reserve Law Review, “One of the major requirements, being that the percentage of national support must meet fifteen to participate and the absurdity of this prerequisite as the debates would be the means of gaining this level of support.” (Toth, vol. 64, no. 1, pp. 239-277).

Ballot access laws create further difficulties that stand in the way of third parties increasing their ability to gain the attention of voters who may not be aware of their platform/ campaign. Ballot access law is governed from state to state, allowing each state to decide on how each candidate can attain representation on their ballot. The United States is considered to have the worst laws pertaining to access to the ballot. Some of the laws show clear and intentional favorability of monopolizing the political system and the obliviousness to the fact that the states compose these ballots to force major party domination. In most cases, states with strict ballot access laws require petitions of a certain percentage of registered voters’ signatures, a purposely short window of time to acquire the signatures, or the law that requires Maryland’s petition signers to be published in newspapers by the collector of the signatures. Ballot access restrictions are so loosely interpreted that they could even eventually cause one-party domination if the stronger main party could pass highly restricting ballot access laws to favor their party and essentially completely dominate the states ballot. This is not just a fear as this has been seen in Florida and Louisiana around the early twentieth century. The necessity of ballot access law is insignificant as there have been only two cases in our political history where the ballot for any office has exceeded ten candidates where they stayed under thirteen candidates. 

As for the current actions in place to attempt to fix the frustration among Americans and additional opportunities to confront the severe modification that many believe need to be performed, reform is the first consideration. Current efforts are being practiced that limit the ability of candidates to jump from party to party explained by partisan disaffiliation laws. The initial goal motivating this restriction is to prevent voter confusion however it is also in place to limit the chances of candidates to unsuccessfully serve their current party before trying to switch. The two evident ways to execute reform is executing it at the bigger picture or slowly attempting to adjust the most concerning areas of corruption. Challenging the political system as a whole and the introduction of the idea to completely abolishing the constitution that our country was founded on is a concept that Forbes initially puts forward to increase the favorability of the writer’s more realistic method, “One option I have long favored for giving third parties more influence without the necessity of changing the Constitution or abandoning the two-party system would be fusion voting.” (Bartlett). The concept of fusion voting would simply bring the minor parties together with their most agreeable major party nominee who they most closely share views with. A further reform opportunity includes the overall elimination of ballot access laws as they have been statistically proven to be completely unnecessary in American history, distinctly serving to make an attempt of political monopoly. Additionally, the push for either government regulation over the Commission of Presidential Debates or the agreement to comprise on looser qualifications to help third parties and their platforms need to participate in these debates to gain the supporters.

The research can be and is argued by not only the third party candidates themselves but many of their supporters who state that it is morally wrong to consider the anti-vote. Some may also argue that “success” can be determined by more than winning, as making voters knowledgeable and aware of their platform is just as important to the candidates as winning is. George Yancey makes an effort to refute the popular thought of third party candidates serving as a wasted vote in his article on “The Stream” published during the race between Trump and Clinton. Yancey puts forward encouragement of his audience to vote for a candidate who they support morally and not for their connection and/ or identification to the party they represent. Some disagreements I have among the articles is the belief of reform and change in big aspects of government the various authors believe in. However, I can back the desires of adjustments in the barriers that restrict the success of these minor parties. Each source has an exclusively different perspective which has greatly affected my own by taking away pieces of each writing I can agree with and building my own unique perspective. 

The United States continues to see a decrease in third party success which makes clear that there is an apparent problem in either our political system or the aspects that compose our current federal republic. Although many independents and third party candidates along with their supporters will argue that they define a successfulness by their achievement of reaching out to new audience as well as salvaging supporters who are lost during perplexing elections. However, when considering third party success as their ability to win the election or even simply winning over a single state, its near impossibility of winning continues to become finer. The evidence supporting this correlated decline in third parties comes from conceptual barriers that are sometimes inescapable in plurality voting due to our competitive and fearful human nature as well as the restrictions that many organizations, supporting federal aid, and ability to appear of ballots. Reform is seen possible through modifications in the aspects that we are easily able to alter, practically limiting us to the structurally set barriers rather than the metaphysical barriers our political system inevitably plants into our beliefs.