If anything can be gleaned from this debacle that we call the 2016 presidential election, it is that third-party candidates are undervalued, unappreciated and, sometimes, persecuted by the United States election system. We see a constant pattern at work; all of the attention is given to the Republican and Democratic nominees, which causes the third-party candidates to get lost in the shuffle or be labeled as "on the fringe." They are barred from participating in debates and their ideas are virtually ignored, especially by the mainstream press.
I had the privilege recently to speak about the treatment of third-party candidates with Ralph Nader, the iconic consumer advocate and former presidential candidate. He said he believes that our current system is a deeply unfair and needs to be changed so that every candidate has a shot at the presidency, no matter their party affiliation.
To see how third party candidates are treated by the two established parties, examine the campaign of Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont. He ran a well-funded grassroots presidential race and garnered enormous support from voters who neither trusted not liked Hillary. “I feel that Bernie would have won, had it not been for [Hillary’s superdelegates] and closed primaries,” Mr. Nader told me. Indeed, recent email leaks showed that the DNC was adamantly against Bernie Sanders’s campaign and worked to sabotage it to benefit Hillary Clinton. The chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman, has since resigned, but it was too late to save Sanders's bid for the presidency. “The Democratic Party treated Bernie Sanders like a third-party candidate,” Mr. Nader said.
The DNC also pressured Bernie Sanders to endorse Hillary before their convention in July. This often happens with third party candidates. The DNC and RNC assert that these candidates spoil the election and tell them to back out of the race. “By running, we are exercising our three main free speech rights, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of petition,” asserts Mr. Nader. “When they tell us to withdraw from the race, they’re telling us to shut up, which is denying us our constitutional rights.”
Mr. Nader and I firmly believe that this deeply unfair system can change for the better. “We have to start with education,” he states. “Elementary school kids are told early on that they need to vote for one of the two main candidates because they’re winners.” A much better alternative would be to teach school children about all of the candidates running in all the parties. Then, they will beable to cast an educated vote in the future because they'll know about the extensive and multi-faceted nature of American politics.
“We also need to lower the requirements to get in on the presidential debates,” contends Mr. Nader. The current regulations say that in order to participate in the debates, the candidate needs to have the support of a minimum of fifteen percent in the polls. Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party continues to have trouble with this rule, even though he has a ten percent approval rating, one of the largest of any third-party candidate. He has tried to appeal the rule time and again, but the DNC and RNC remain opposed to allowing him to debate.
This soundsa lot like what happened to Mr. Nader, who recounts how he was shut out of the debates in the 2000 election due to his low poll numbers, even though he would pack the house at every one of his rallies. By lowering the requirements to enter the debates, the American people will then become more exposed to the ideas of third-party candidates, which might lead to the voters feeling more inclined to support them.
Lastly, we also should get rid of the mindset that you throw your vote away when you support the third parties. Mr. Nader told me that in Oregon, Oklahoma and the District of Columbia, a vote for a write-in candidate will not be counted and disposed of. I asked him if he would agree that write-ins are literally throw-away votes in thoseplaces and he emphatically responded yes. By convincing people that third-party votes have no value, the political system is basically forcing Americans to vote for one of two candidates. To me, that sounds like something a communist dictatorship would do, not our America.
A note of optimism: It is true that the American political scene is a mess right now, with third-party candidates being shut out. But support is slowly increasing for the third parties, particularly with millennials who are dissatisfied the Republican and Democratic choices. “It is a little bit better now than when I ran sixteen years ago,” Mr. Nader said.
Our founding fathers built this country on the idea that all men are created equal and that everyone has the opportunity to pursue an elected position. But the Republican and Democratic parties have made the entire system revolve around them with no space for new parties and ideas. If we have learned anything in 2016 it is that this dysfunctional dynamic must change.
