Arguments for Third Parties from the Tea Party

a review “Duopoly: How the Republicrats Control the Electoral Process” by Darryl Perry, 2011

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I decided to read this little book to learn about support for third parties from the Right side of the political spectrum. One similarity with the Left wing point of view is that both sides regard the Democratics and Republicans as two factions of a single ruling party, with Perry even combining the two names into one – the “Republicrats”. He gives brief descriptions of alternative ways to establish and regulate voting, and their pros and cons with respect to third parties, but he is somewhat limited in his knowledge.

    Perry is a history buff and regards the 1888 election as the last “free” election - where all voters made up their own ballots, or used party-prepared ballots, rather than government printed ballots. Except I couldn’t see how this in itself could keep serious candidates off the ballot. His bigger contention is that “It doesn’t matter who casts a ballot, or how; what matters is who creates the ballot, and how” (p 2). Yet, it is obvious to me that all of these matter, provided that the “who” in question means supporters of this or that party, candidate, or issue.

    Perry’s more well-founded focus is on how the major parties often exclude third parties from the general election ballot, or promote voting methods that turn third party candidates into “spoilers”, or gerrymander the districts to get a pre-determined outcome, etc. He points out that “in 1943 Georgia passed a law requiring new parties and independent candidates to collect signatures from 5% of registered voters” (p 11). Then “since 1950 an average of 93% of Representatives [to Congress] have been re-elected” (p 13), with no third party candidates elected and with 16 states requiring third party petitions by June 1 (p 18). Some states have allowed “straight ticket voting” (vote by party, not candidate, the choice of up to 2/3 of voters historically, p 20), which is damaging to minor parties and independent candidates.

    In winner-take-all elections third party candidates are blamed as “spoilers” but Perry claims that a careful analysis of the votes often shows otherwise, demonstrating that Ross Perot did not change the outcome of the 1992 election, for example, and with multiple factors playing a role in extremely close elections like the 2000 election, not just Ralph Nader. The “Top Two Primary” (only the top 2 proceed to the general election) is very bad for third parties and independents, who are almost always eliminated in the primary. Gerrymandering is often just as bad. Even well-meaning campaign finance laws often end up privileging incumbents.

    When it comes to alternative methods of voting, Perry finds some benefits for ballots based on rankings or ratings and for approval voting but he has only a limited grasp of the many alternatives and their pros and cons. For example, the only algorithm he knows for tabulating ranked ballots is Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). He is not even aware of points-based methods, such as the Borda Count, where a higher ranking for a candidate gives that candidate more points, with the points added up over all voters to determine the winner. Such methods offer greater flexibility for dealing with issues like under voting or strategic voting and better representation of voter preferences. In addition, I have generalized these methods for improved proportional representation in legislative bodies using a cluster analysis algorithm based on optimization and scientific computing.

    Perry does give a nod to proportional representation, apparently thinking of European party list methods. But he doesn’t cite the standard algorithm based on ranked ballots, called “Single Transferable Vote”, which is a generalization of IRV that uses a quota formula to approximate proportionality. The “elephant in the room” that Perry does not mention, is that no voting method can be “perfect”. That is, it’s a mathematical theorem that even the “best” methods will sometimes give outcomes that appear contrary to the will of the voters. The real goal should be voting methods that make the worst outcomes much less probable while generally yielding the best, or at least, good outcomes.