[EL] Instapundit, Third Parties, and the NPVIC

[Salvador Peralta]

Third parties have done comparatively little during the last 80 years to build anything more than marginal support over several elections, so any attempts to divine whether NPV would help or hurt those efforts is purely speculative.   

My view is that most minor parties tend to marginalize themselves by fielding candidates who 
are often not very qualified for the offices they seek, and who do 
not have the resources to mount a credible campaign for that office.  Poor results at 
the ballot box have the dual effect of causing members to become 
dispirited and of shutting minor parties out of the legislative 
process which in turn contributes to the outcomes predicted by Duverger's law.  

I suspect that minor parties will tend to do much better vis-a-vis Duverger's law by not pursuing a presidential electoral strategy (with or without NPV), but instead pushing for systemic reforms such as fusion voting while simultaneously pursuing an electoral strategy of setting up winnable races for their own candidates in local and state offices. Of course, not too many parties have attempted that approach, let alone succeeded at it, so that too is rather speculative.

- Sal Peralta


From: "Scarberry, Mark" <Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu>
To: "law-election at UCI.EDU" <law-election at uci.edu> 
Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2011 1:22 PM
Subject: [EL] Instapundit, Third Parties, and the NPVIC
 

Law prof Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit makes the following statement:
“If, as I expect, Obama is trailing in Tennessee by double digits, I’ll vote for Gary Johnson. But if it even looks like it might be close, I’ll vote for whoever the GOP nominee is, and feel good about it. Obama has been a presidential disaster without parallel in my lifetime, and that must be brought to an end before anything constructive can begin.” http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/134326/
Would a national popular vote system make it harder for third parties to build support over several elections, because they would find it harder to attract votes in states where, under the current system, a voter might not need to vote for the lesser of two evils (as the voter might see it)? Currently, voters in states in which one major party candidate has a substantial lead in the polling can vote for candidates that they would prefer but that have no chance of winning the presidency. Or they can vote for a third party’s candidate in hopes that the third party will become a serious force, Over time, a third party whose nominees showed some strength might be taken more seriously and might have a chance to move out of its status as a marginal or spoiler party. 
I haven’t seen this possible effect discussed elsewhere, but I suppose it has been. Does it raise a genuine concern for those who would like to permit our political system to evolve? Or does it show that the NPVIC would strengthen the two party system (and perhaps strengthen the effect of Duverger’s law), which may be desirable?
Mark 
Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law
Malibu, CA 90263
(310) 506-4667
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