Free Republic

The Federalist has this article by Victoria Marshall, detailing Democratic Party efforts from 2004 through the present to prevent voters from voting for parties or candidates to the left of the Democratic Party.The story says nothing about the period 1936-1980. Democrats tried to keep the 1936 Union Party off the ballot in Pennsylvania; to keep the Progressive Party off the ballot in 1948 in Illinois; to keep independent presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy off the ballot in New York in 1976; and to keep independent presidential candidate John Anderson off the ballot in 1980 in Massachusetts and North Carolina.By contrast, Republicans...

There were three critical swing states in which the Green Party appeared on the ballot in 2016 and didn’t appear in 2020. The states of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania all removed the Green Party from the presidential election in 2020, with Democratic operatives using underhanded tactics to kick them off. Labor activist Howie Hawkins was the Green Party’s 2020 presidential nominee. In 2016, the Green Party nominee Jill Stein won more than 34,000 votes in Arizona. If a Green Party candidate had appeared with ballot access in the state in 2020, he or she would’ve been sure to win enough...

In a rider passed in the last state budget, the legislature upped the ante for minor parties in New York. So, two of those minor parties, the Greens and the Libertarians, are suing. In the past, to achieve ballot status, minor parties needed to earn 50,000 votes for their gubernatorial candidates. In other words, they needed 50,000 votes to qualify for the ballot every four years – rules that have been in place for decades. The new rules are far more restrictive. They require that minor parties garner 130,000 votes or two percent of votes cast. Additionally, they demand that...

I try to like people, but John Kasich represents a real challenge. The guy really rubs me the wrong way. Somehow, in the midst of all the Tillerson-Pompeo talk, Kasich turned up on MSNBC this morning. Speaking of the special election in Pennsylvania today, Kasich bragged about having been elected to Congress at age 30. That, according to Kasich, makes 33-year old Dem candidate Conor Lamb “a little old.” Kasich made his 2020 strategy pretty clear, saying that the emergence of third parties “is more realistic than it’s ever been.” When host Stephanie Ruhle asked him flat out if he...

either Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson nor the Green Party's Jill Stein managed to make a dent in the Electoral College, but they did post a significant enough showing in several states arguably to help elect Donald Trump. Trump won 290 Electoral College votes to 232 for Hillary Clinton, as of Wednesday evening, with Clinton topping him in the popular vote. But had the Democrats managed to capture the bulk of third-party voters in some of the closest contests -- Wisconsin (10), Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16) and Florida (29) -- Clinton would have defeated Trump by earning 307 Electoral College...

Much has been made about Sarah Palin’s comments on going third party. I just have one problem with the comments about Governor Palin’s remarks. Though she was answering a question about going third party, I did not and still do not interpret her remarks as expressing an outright willingness to go third party. Governor Palin has long been a disruptive candidate and, as a disruptive candidate, has worked from inside the party to change its ways. When she says things like, more and more of us are going to start saying, ‘You know, what’s wrong with being independent,’ kind of...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's re-election effort is paying close attention to two candidates mounting third-party campaigns for the presidency, believing they could draw votes from Republican rival Mitt Romney and help Obama win a few tightly contested states. One candidate is Virgil Goode, a former conservative Virginia congressman who is running as a member of the Constitution Party. The other is Gary Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico who is the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee. Obama's team has scenarios whereby Obama can win states like Virginia and Colorado with less than 50 percent of the...

Voter dissatisfaction or not, there is very little support this year for third party presidential candidates. In a Gallup Poll released Friday that includes three minor-party candidates, Barack Obama received 47 percent support, Mitt Romney 40, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson 3, Green candidate Jill Stein 1 and Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode less than 1. Two percent of voters said they favor U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), 1 percent mentioned someone else, 2 percent had no opinion and 5 percent said they will not vote. Voter dissatisfaction or not, there is very little support this year for third party presidential...

Today's Morning Joe has been one long festival of Gingrich gouging. Joe Scarborough set the tone early. During the opening segment Scarborough announced that, like Glenn Beck, if the choice comes down to Obama vs. Gingrich, and Ron Paul is running as a third-party candidate, "I'm going to give him a long look." View the video here.

A group of voters from minor political parties is challenging California's new top-two primary system in the courts, arguing that the election process established under Proposition 14 is unconstitutional. A lawsuit filed Monday in Alameda Superior Court claims that the new system, which sends only the two candidates who get the most votes in the primary, regardless of political party affiliation, to the general election, "severely burdens voter, candidate and party associational rights." "By limiting access to the general election ballot, Prop. 14 effectively bars small political parties, their candidates, and their members from effective political association, precisely at the...

Chuck Todd didn't cautiously couch his prediction. On today's Morning Joe, NBC's political director flatly forecast that third and/or fourth party presidential candidates will emerge in the Spring. Todd based his bold prediction on the theory that there is a hunger for populist candidates, and that populism is not the way Obama or Romney [his presumed Republican candidate] "roll." View the video here.

Some have suggested that with an unpopular president who's got a somewhat dissatisfied base and suffers from a weak economy, and with a Republican nominee who inevitably will either struggle with the middle or who is not conservative enough for the right, there is room for a strong third-party bid for the first time in at least 16 years. But we took a look at seven possible independent candidates against Obama and his strongest GOP challenger, Mitt Romney, and found that the chances of defection by GOP-inclined voters are stronger than are cracks in the Democrats’ armor. Despite their grumbling,...

With the results of this Tuesday’s election, some are crying foul. Several “Tea Party” candidates lost and one or more individuals (specifically from within the Tea Party) are blaming third party candidates for their Tea Party backed candidate’s loss. Certainly, their grievance has some sound reasoning, but much of it, in my opinion, is angry spin rooted in wounded pride. In this posting, I will look at several key races, such as Florida, Delaware, Nevada, Colorado, Alaska and most importantly, the Missouri Congressional race for its 3rd district. I will attempt to separate legitimate complaints from irrelevant ones and hopefully...

Off the top of my (very groggy) head, I cannot think of too many cases where a Democrat lost a winnable race because of too many left-of-center votes drifting to a liberal third party, other than Ralph Nader’s role in the 2000 presidential election. Last night, a withdrawn third-party bid ended up costing Republicans at least one key victory. I’m starting to think the New York 23rd district is cursed. Doug Hoffman, Conservative-party candidate, inspiring figure of 2009′s special election, made a remarkably mature decision to drop his Conservative bid this year and back the Republican, Matt Doheny. Last night,...

Nationally, Democrats say they intend to campaign against the tea party movement. But locally, Democratic officials and activists in at least four states now stand accused of collaborating with tea party candidates in an attempt to sabotage Republican challengers in some of the closest House races in the nation. The charges of dirty tricks are being leveled in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey and Florida — and they involve more than a half-dozen contests that could tip the balance of power in the House. The accusations range from helping tea party activists circulate candidate petition sheets to underwriting the creation of...

Alan Keyes and the Neocon Destruction of Third PartiesBy Maggie Bloom Sacramento Central Committee American Independent Party I’ve really come to dislike Alan Keyes. He says all the right conservative things but what he does is destructive to the Constitutional movement. I have trouble believing it is not planned. First time I noticed it was in 2006. Illegal immigration had finally hit the main stream media as an issue. Citizen border patrol groups sprang up and huge amounts of money were donated to build an Israeli style fence along the Mexican border. The money was all funneled through a non...

If the major parties were running Satan and Beelzebub for office, would you vote for Beelzebub because he is “the lesser of two evils?” Not this citizen; if those are the choices, I’m a write-in for Jesus.

On October 20, the North Carolina State Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the petition requirement, 2% of the last gubernatorial vote, does not violate the State Constitution. The plaintiffs are the Libertarian and Green Parties. This is the case that was filed in 2005. The 2% requirement for 2010 and 2012 is 85,379 signatures. North Carolina’s requirement is the second most severe in the nation, both on a percentage basis and a raw number basis, when one compares each state’s easier method for getting on the ballot for president. Here is the decision. The Court also upheld the 2%...

The 2010 will be the most important midterm election in the history of our nation.   The coalition necessary to vote out of office those members of Congress who are supporting President Obama's effort to turn the country into a socialist utopia is still fractured and pursuing individual agendas. It is part of the Democratic Party strategy to keep the electorate divided and at odds with each other. In today's world of sound bites and miniscule attention spans, a simple sentence -- "There isn't a bit of difference between Republicans and Democrats" -- has become embedded in the nation's lexicon and...

Where are you going Lady Liberty? Where have you gone? Sadly, most lovers of freedom and independence know the answer to those questions. They simply don’t know what to do about it. Write a letter to your elected officials or the local paper? Educate your children about American ideals? Buy gold? Stock up on supplies? Oil your guns? Gripe to your barber? Make a sign and stand around sipping coffee at a protest rally? Hand out freedom literature? Vent on a radio talk show? Pray? The last idea is always a good one. The others appear to be ineffective, at...