When will people wise up and start voting in other parties?

Parties are half the problem now.

The recent third party candidates go about it the wrong way in my opinion. They should concentrate on 15–20 congressional seats that they have at least an outside chance of winning instead of blowing all their funds running a presidential candidate who has no chance.

Once they have established a base, they can run senate and presidential candidates.

When the moon is in the seventh house, Jupiter aligns with Mars and some other astrology stuff. Yeah, I don’t have faith in people ever wising up..

I think it’s stupid to vote based on just the party it’s self people should vote based off of what the person running is offering to the people. People just don’t tend to pay attention anymore to political debates and speeches to see what the person is offering. They just seem to depend on if the person is democrat or republican or what ever they want. Then they depend on that person having the same views cause they are in the party of their choice. People just need to start paying attention to whats going on around them.

I voted for Nader. Sorry about that.

I have no confidence that third parties are possible in the ideologically-narrow political climate here in the US.
1996 – Voted for Clinton and felt burned because he was a conservative.
2000 – I voted Green (Nader). Of course, I’ll be speaking apologetically to my future grandkids about how I fucked everything up for them.

It’s all about the lesser of 2 evils now. I used to lecture people about how depressing that was. Now I think it’s depressing and just a fact of life here in the states.
Note: I’m an absurdly-“liberal” socialist. Democrats are waayyyyy too much of a conservative corporate party for my taste. However, sometimes they throw us some lip service or a small gesture to differentiate themselves from the base evil that represents the Republican platform.

We need someone who is good hearted and knows how to be an adult about things in office who cares about whats going on in America.

The electoral rules in this country strongly militate against such a strategy ever being successful. The reason is that the rules award victories to “first past the post”. What that means is that a candidate doesn’t have to win “a majority” of votes in his district, he only needs to come in first among all candidates.

So for the time being, third parties are unlikely to win any contests.

In addition to those rules, which are hard enough by themselves to give a victory to any third-party candidate, the rules established by the Democratic and Republican “owners” of Congress and every state house ensure that candidates from those parties are specifically exempted from “ballot access” petitioning that is required of every other candidate. That means that third party candidates already face an uphill fight just to circulate petitions according to the rules that each state sets simply to be named on the ballot. That takes time – and a lot of money that third parties just don’t have.

If we had a parliamentary Congress such as the UK, Canada and many other British Commonwealth nations (and others, of course, such as Israel), then “proportional representation” could be possible. Third party candidates could become elected simply because of clearing whatever bar was set for election across the whole country. That would make for a lot more chances of overt coalition government (sort of what already exists in the Republican Party today, in fact.) But we’re not about to try that, either – because whether it would serve the country better or not, it’s certainly not in the interests of the two major parties to even consider it. Aside from which it would tend to make government somewhat more ‘unstable’ than it already is, I think.

@johnpowell __I voted for Nader. Sorry about that.__

Do you live in Florida?

I think it is unlikely to happen any time soon. Although, I think if someone like Mayor Bloomberg of NY ran he would have a really really good shot. The way I see it, it would have to be an Independent who attracts the 50% of the Republicans who are not Evangelical obsessed with conservative social views, and the majority of the Democrats. Many people who are registered Democrat and Republican are Independent at heart, they just register that way to have influence in the primaries.

There is a chance that third party candidates may get some seats in California soon. Our primaries will now take the top two vote getters in the primary to run against each other in the general election, regardless of party. The first time this will be in use will be next year.

But I am not sure that proportional representation is that good an idea. From my perspective it causes problems such as the impossibility of any peace resolution in Israel. And the “Tea Party” bloc in the House now has effectively stopped any rational negotiation here.

@johnpowell HA! I leaned my lesson the hard way back in 1992 when I voted for Ross Perot. We have a two party system. I look for the lesser of two evils, hold my nose and vote.

@johnpowell and @tom_g It was touching for me when you apologized for voting for Nader. The repercussions of him getting those crucial votes were deep and regrettable. My faith in the American voter is restored!

Meanwhile, I don’t believe any serious contender third party would emerge in the near future so I’m happy with the Repubs and Dems now. It’s far from perfect but it’s the best one we got. We should stop electing extreme politicians though, Dems or Repubs.

I voted for Jack Lalanne and Ron Popeil.

The problem isn’t as much the political parties we have as that they cater to the people. First the people wanted lots of free help back in the Depression, so bit by bit we got Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and Medicare. Then the people decided free gifts aren’t really free, so they started voting for the Santa that just gives money. Free tax cuts that magically pay for themselves. So long as people continue to believe in Santa Claus, it makes no earthly difference the name of the party—unless a Never Listen to the People party could win seats.