But the other way around, simply introducing instant runoff voting or other alternative systems for the presidential election won’t guarantee that you can escape a two-party system. You still need to have more than two political parties that are capable of producing viable candidates and can afford to back them up in campaigning. If not, at most, you’d end up with introducing the possibility of electing a President who has no fellow party members in Congress or in the Senate.

Instead, you really should change how Congress and the Senate is elected as well.

Currently, suppose a new party is founded in the US with national ambitions, and they’d like to get a presence in Congress. They’ll probably start out with little funding for advertising and campaigning, but suppose that by campaigning really hard they manage to get 10% of the popular vote nation-wide. In that case, it is not unlikely that they’d still get no seats in Congress, because in each district, people running for the major two parties will likely get the majorities. If there are districts where support for this new party is highly concentrated, maybe they could get one or two seats in Congress, but it is not likely. That’s not worth the investment. Even with one or two seats in Congress, it’s not likely that any backers will renew their commitment for next election season, or at the very least, not likely they’ll expand their backing. And spending the amount of money needed to found a new party so that it immediately could get a majority of votes in a large number of districts is simply not realistic.

However, in a system with proportional representation, as a counter-example, a party that managed to get 10% of the popular vote would actually get 10% of the seats. This is a good foothold to start with, and a decent return of investment. Then, that party can start working on increasing their national presence. Their Congressmen could get known to the general public for their standpoints on important matters of policies, for instance. Next election, they may even have someone among them that has earned enough respect to be a viable candidate for the presidency. It’s not inconceivable that, if they did well in their first term, in the next election their financial support could increase and their popular vote could grow. Of course, they would have more competition, because what one party did, others can do too. But hey, isn’t the common attitude in the US that competition is good? Some more competition in the political marketplace wouldn’t hurt at all, IMHO.

That is the central flaw in our election method, and until it is fixed, there will only in extremely rare and exceptional circumstances be viable third party candidates.

Complaints that people think a third party vote is wasted that do not also mention election methods which would fix the problem just piss me right off.

But even more problematic is that it is in neither of the two parties’ interest to change the system. Inevitably, reforming the system to allow more parties in is going to mean that the existing parties loose influence. Even the party that is currently not in power would be reluctant to change the system, since it lessens the chances that they in the future will regain power.

By the way, I think a split of an existing party would be a more likely way to change to a many-party system than introducing a new party. The difficulties of a new party establishing itself are well known, but a party that split off from a bigger party could at least count on a certain number of followers and some financial support going with them.

I have recently been pondering whether the Republican party, after the elections ended in such a disaster to them, could decide to split into two parties: a moderate, fiscal conservative party, and a right-wing (Christian) social conservative party. After all, we’ve seen a lot of polarization within the GOP lately between these two groups, and it’s arguable that this in part lead a lot of people to vote for the Democrats this time around. It’s hard to see what would bind these groups together in the first place, just on the basis of ideology alone.

However, I think that this split is not likely to happen, because it means that each half could never again defeat the Democrats, and they know it. Even if such a split would happen, it seems likely that it’s only going to be temporary. The smallest of the two new parties would likely empty out into the larger, possibly accommodated by the larger part giving lip service to the ideals of the other group to bring them back into the fold. Or, if the moderate party is the smaller part, it will likely lose many members to the Democrats.

Of course, a similar issue is going on in the Democratic party, which appears to have a centrist subgroup and a subgroup that is more clearly left-wing, leaning towards socialism (they just can’t use that term or they’d upset the centrists). We haven’t seen too much polarization there recently, though. It is therefore even more unlikely that the Democrat party will split.

So while I have some hope that Obama will make changes for the better within the system, I am reasonably sure he will not actually change the system itself – the dynamics of the two party system strongly resists this.

The NPV looks interesting, I’m glad there’s organizations fighting for reform.

As to getting rid of the Electoral College, that would require amending the Constitution, which would be difficult to get support for. Instead, some states are proposing an end run around it, the National Popular Vote initiative:

http://www.nationalpopularvote.org

If enough states agree, they will give their electoral votes to whichever party wins the popular vote.

It’s an interesting idea that pluralities lead to two-party states, but that doesn’t make it more democratic or representative of the actual public’s desire.

And remember: I live in Canada, one of the exceptions to that Law (with the NDP and Bloc existing as major third-parties).