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| Joining us now to talk about third parties in America is Jonathan Ladd, public policy and government professor at Georgetown University. | ||
| Jonathan, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mimi. | |
| It's really great to be here. | ||
| So as you may have heard, Elon Musk has announced that he's forming the America Party. | ||
| This is his posting on X. We'll just show it to everybody. | ||
| He says this, by a factor of two to one, you want a new political party and you shall have it. | ||
| When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste and graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. | ||
| Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom. | ||
| What was your reaction when you found out about that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, first, he's right that most people are dissatisfied with the choices they have. | |
| Most people, if you ask them, they would like more parties, more options. | ||
| So he's correct about that. | ||
| The other thing that came to mind, though, is that it's actually quite hard to start a new party that would challenge the existing parties. | ||
| So what are the steps? | ||
| What does he have to go through to do that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he has to decide first, does he want primarily a presidential party to run a third party for president, or does he want a third party that's going to run candidates all down the ballot, right? | |
| You know, for Congress, for state offices, right? | ||
| A third party that would be more realistic would be one that actually challenged at all these levels. | ||
| The biggest challenge for all third parties, though, is that the U.S. compared to other democracies has single-member plurality districts, which means that you don't need to get a majority to win a House seat in Congress. | ||
| You don't need to win a majority to win a Senate seat in almost all states. | ||
| You don't even need to win a majority of the votes to get elected president. | ||
| Whoever gets the most, which means whoever gets the most votes gets electoral college votes from states, gets elected for the Senate or House, which means that people are always afraid of splitting their votes, right? | ||
| A big challenge for minor parties is that voters are afraid of splitting their votes and supporting minor candidates. | ||
| So this is a big challenge for minor parties. | ||
| When you say splitting their votes, you mean from the top of the ticket to down ballot. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so like if you, I'm sorry, I mean, so like if you are considering voting for a third party, like Elon Musk's party, but your second choice is Donald Trump, and the candidate you least like is the Democrats, right? | |
| You're afraid, oh, if I vote for Elon Musk, I'm going to make it more likely that my least preferred candidate is going to win. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So there's institutional challenges. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right. | |
| And Democrats want to vote for like the Green Party have the same issue. | ||
| Like they're worried about splitting the liberal vote and their least favored candidate getting elected. | ||
| So this is always a challenge for minor parties, is that people are afraid of splitting the vote and the candidate they least want to get elected gets elected. | ||
| So what would need to happen? | ||
| What are those institutional changes that would need to happen that could make a third party viable in America? | ||
| Just if you were to, if you had a magic wand, what would change? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, If more states, rather than have single-member districts, had some sort of proportional representation system where they elected the, you know, the each party got House members from that state in proportion to the vote they got rather than single-member districts. | |
| Now, that doesn't seem to be against the Constitution, but it is in violation of a federal law. | ||
| That would require a change in federal law. | ||
| There's a federal law that requires states to have single-member congressional districts. | ||
| So it's possible, but it would require significant change. | ||
| Another thing is that another change that's not proportional representation for the House, but that is popular among many reformers is ranked choice voting. | ||
| I wanted to ask you about that. | ||
| So explain that and how that would impact a third-party candidate. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, ranked choice voting basically is the same as an instant runoff, right? | |
| So if no one gets a majority, you don't have to worry about splitting the vote on your side, right? | ||
| If you vote for a third-party candidate, your votes get instantly reallocated to your second choice candidate. | ||
| That would mean that third-party candidates might get a lot of votes in the first round. | ||
| There's no guarantee they would get elected. | ||
| Their votes just might get reallocated, but they might be viable and stick around for a while and get a lot of first-round votes. | ||
| So I think it eventually maybe replace the major parties. | ||
| So if more parties switch to ranked choice or instant runoff voting, it's plausible that you might get more third parties sticking around for a while. | ||
| It's no guarantee they will replace the major parties that people want. | ||
| There's no guarantee of that, but it's more realistic. | ||
| And most people's experience with ranked choice voting recently probably is the Democratic Party primary in New York City, which had ranked choice voting. | ||
| So people ranked their choices. | ||
| And if you're one of your first choice candidates wasn't top two, your vote got reallocated to your second or third choice candidate. | ||
| So that's a perform many people support as making it easier for minor parties. | ||
| If you've got a question or a comment about third-party political, third political parties, I guess it's called, you can give us a call. | ||
| It's Democrats are on 202748-8000. | ||
| Republicans are on 202748-8001. | ||
| Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| Our guest is Jonathan Ladd of Georgetown University. | ||
| Let's talk historically. | ||
| Do third parties typically revolve around specific issues? | ||
| So I'm thinking about like Ross Perot about fiscal issues. | ||
| George Wallace was a segregationist. | ||
| Is that typically what happens with third parties? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There are basically two types of third parties in presidential elections in American history. | |
| One is they have a particular issue, right? | ||
| So they run on an issue that the major parties are ignoring. | ||
| You can go all the way back to 1852 and the Free Soil, I'm sorry, it's 1848 and the Free Soil Party, which got 10% of the vote, like anti-slavery party. | ||
| And you can think of Ross Perot in 1992, whose main issue was deficit reduction and ran and got 19% of the vote. | ||
| So sometimes you get people running on an issue that's been ignored by the major parties. | ||
| And the other thing you get is when one of the major parties split, and that's a pretty different thing, right? | ||
| So you get in 1912, the Republicans basically split in two: William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt. | ||
| Teddy Roosevelt kind of runs his own party because he didn't get the nomination. | ||
| And that basically dooms the Republicans because they split the Republican vote almost evenly, and Woodrow Wilson gets elected even though he didn't get a majority of the vote. | ||
| A very similar thing happened In 1948, when the Southern Democrats or Dixiecrats walk out of Democratic convention and Strom Thurmond runs as a Southern Democrat third party because he's upset of Harry Truman's support for civil rights. | ||
| Truman managed to surprisingly survive that and still get elected, although it was a come from behind surprising victory in 1948. | ||
| But it was a big problem for him. | ||
| So you occasionally get these instances where a party splits. | ||
| And that is often fatal for the party. | ||
| But then you get these other instances where the third party really is putting forth an issue that other parties are ignoring. | ||
| Sometimes that's successful in the sense that that third party gets the major parties to pay attention to their issue. | ||
| So after 1992, the major parties did pay more attention to deficit reduction. | ||
| You could argue that Ross Perot succeeded in getting that issue more attention. | ||
| And that's the model of there's a 20th century historian Richard Hofstadter wrote that American third parties like this are like bees. | ||
| They sting and then they die, right? | ||
| They get their issue on the agenda of the major parties and then they go away, right? | ||
| Either voluntarily or interest in them goes away after the major parties actually address their issue. | ||
| So the question is, is Elon Musk going to be like this, just trying to put forth an issue? | ||
| And if the major parties address it, will he go away like a bee? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| So who would you say was the most successful third party candidate in history? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a good question. | |
| I mean, the example people always give is in the 1800s, right, after the Whigs collapsed, the Republican Party started out as a minor party and became one of the two major parties, right? | ||
| And when the Whigs were collapsing, there were several rival parties trying to be the major alternative. | ||
| The other major rival to the Republicans was the American Party, which is better known by its nickname in the 1850s, the Know Nothing Party, which was called the Know Nothing. | ||
| Its official name was the American Party. | ||
| It was the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Party. | ||
| It got 21% of the presidential vote in 1856, the election before Abraham Lincoln was elected. | ||
| So it was vying to be the second party and had substantial support. | ||
| I think that that's a good question. | ||
| So the Republican Party clearly is a minor party that became a major party and was most successful. | ||
| We'll take you live now to a conversation on the Trump administration's approach to engaging with the small business community. | ||
| It's hosted by Black Americans for a Better Future, live here on C-SPAN. | ||
| I'd like to say a few words about a guy I met 25 years ago, Mr. Raynard Jackson. | ||
| Character. |