Cross-posted from Third Party Watch:

I was a Libertarian for twenty years before I decided to start my own third party experiment (www.liberalcapitalist.com), and now after all this time I'm starting to realize that it's not about ballot access, or debate access, or all of the standard issue excuses we've all believed all these years for the failures of third parties.

The boot at the throat of third parties is the way we vote: one man, one election, one vote. No matter what policies voters support, our current plurality voting system compels most of us to avoid "throwing away" our (only) vote by voting for either the frontrunner or the main contender. When voters have only one vote to cast, frontrunner + main contender = two party system. Forever. See: Duverger's Law.

If we third party supporters had half a brain in our heads, we would join forces to accomplish one single reform: approval voting, where each voter gets to vote once for each candidate in an election. When voters have the power to vote for one of the top two candidates AND their preferred third party candidate, they will do it, and third parties will be able able to sink or swim on their own instead of being forever doomed by a side effect of our voting system.

And there's no reason to believe the two major parties couldn't be convinced to support ballot reform as well. Approval voting would eliminate spoiling. Every time a Democrat complains all we would have to say is "Nader," and if a Republican questions approval voting we would only have to say "Perot." A switch to approval voting actually stands a snowball's chance because it is in the interest of the Dems and Repubs to do so. Especially with elections so close between them these days that virtually any third party candidate can spoil any election.

Now, with approval voting we're still going to have a two-party system. But it will be a system where the two dominant parties will be the two most popular parties, instead of the endless re-runs of the Democrat and Republican Show. And that, frankly, is the best third parties can realistically hope for. And it's all we should hope for because at the end of the day it's the most fair arrangement.

yours/
peter.