3rd Party Candidates

There is little doubt that the two party system has become too confrontational to be effective. Elected officials now think/are told to vote along party lines rather than work for the good of the Country. The injection of people outside of these parties would definitely help. We have the current President who ran on making people believe this is how he would operate, but we'll have to see about that. Now, I believe that once in office, the President represents the people, not his party, and think that Obama would agree, it's whether or not he actually does that determines the direction of the country, i.e., GW represented a wing of his party more than the people, and look where we are now.

So, if we need "3rd party" people to help fix the system, how do we make this happen? In most instances, state election laws make it harder for people outside of the 2 parties to gain ballot access. Candidates and independents constantly complain about how hard this is, that it is unfair, and try to change qualification for ballot access. There's two problems with this. First, if these people tried as hard to get on the ballot as they do complaining about the process, they probably would not have much of a problem qualifying. Second, anytime an individual works outside of the established parties, they automatically put themselves at a disadvantage of not having the built-in party support system. What they need to learn to do is to build this support system through their ballot access programs. Don't go and pay a firm tens of thousands of dollars to collect your signatures, build a volunteer base that will do it for you. "But, I don't have time, the deadline is too close." Well, if you cannot plan ahead well enough to even run for office, why are you qualified to be in office?

The failure of 3rd party, or outside the system candidates has as much to do with their lack of a support base as it does with some of them being perceived as nut jobs. To think that they are incapable of building the necessary support base is absurd. There are plenty of people looking to change the current system, you have to find them, and give them faith in something. You cannot run thinking that all registered party members support what their party is currently doing, there will be disenchanted Dems and Repubs looking to make a difference. There are also plenty of people outside of the 2 parties who would love to be involved.

What these candidates have to learn, though, is that even though they are running outside of the current system, they must address not only the same issues that the system is dealing with, in detail, but also how he/she is the difference needed. To be taken seriously, they cannot run on a single issue, or even two issues, they need to learn to run on the system issues, and properly present their differences. When they can learn to do this, then we can effect the 2 party system, but not before.