Third Party Watch

Ballot Access News

Both Pennsylvania and West Virginia require minor party and independent presidential petitions to be submitted on August 1. In both states, one or another minor party is struggling with that deadline.

The Pennsylvania deadline seems very vulnerable to challenge. The legislature has never passed any law saying the deadline is August 1. Instead, in [...]

Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily does a masterful job of demolishing Ralph Nader’s recent assertion that Rush Limbaugh is on welfare and the mis-named Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated.

Farah shows that Limbaugh makes his living solely through private enterprise, not public welfare. The story is different, however, for Nader himself:

Do you know how Ralph Nader [...]

Mark Blumenthal, on NationalJournal.com, warns that if history is any indication, support for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr and independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader is being overstated in current polling.

Blumenthal rests his case on the record of previous campaigns, such as those of Nader (2000 and 2004), Pat Buchanan, George Wallace, Ross Perot, and [...]

Jan Baughman reflects in Swans Commentary that “as the 2008 presidential election antics evolve, the third-party candidates (Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Bob Barr, and others) remain virtually nonexistent as far as the mainstream media coverage is concerned.”

A key to keeping third-party candidates invisible, he notes, are the debates that are rigged in favor of the [...]

The Green Party takes over government in Ireland. It was a year ago today.

David Boaz (Cato Institute) and David Kirby (America’s Future Foundation) have published a new study, The Libertarian Vote. Some of their conclusions:

Gallup consistently finds about 20 percent of respondents to be libertarian. We used a narrower definition, and we found that in 2004 libertarians accounted for 13 percent of the voting-age population and 15 [...]

The Whig Party endorsement of Bob Barr brings to mind the history of third parties in America. Writing at Townhall, David R. Stokes provides an interesting history of America’s party structure in the 20th century. Here’s a sample:

Probably the most famous attempted political end-run in history was made by a former president – [...]

One of the recurring themes of third party politics in America seems to be the phenomenon of the “hostile takeover.” A disgruntled major party politician, an eccentric multi-millionaire, or perhaps a group of major party factional schemers decides that rather than working within the party of their putative loyalty, or perhaps forming a new party, [...]

Mary Ruwart’s Candidacy Cause for Celebration
by John David Christensen, Vice-chair Vermont Libertarian Party

Dr. Mary J. Ruwart’s recently announced candidacy for the Libertarian Party’s (LP) presidential nomination should be cause for celebration by libertarian activists everywhere. Or at least by those who desire a movement that is as broadly-based and spirited as the revolution Ron Paul [...]

Libertarian Party activist (and Ron Paul supporter) Rolf Lindgren just went after John McCain on the Populist Party blog:

John McCain has gone on the record, supporting 100 years of war in the Middle East:

McCain: 100 years in Iraq “would be fine with me”

We have already had one Hundred Years’ War, which is one too many [...]

I don’t think this has been written about here and I think that this is an issue that readers here would be highly interested in. In Michigan, various third parties (Green Party, Libertarian Party, Reform Party, Socialist Party, US Taxpayers Party) came together to form the Michigan Third Party Coalition. Despite obvious differences in ideology (i.e. the Socialist Party and US Taxpayers Party are diametrically opposed on almost every issue), these parties have come together to try to reform Michigan electoral law, with its excessively restrictive guidelines. I spent most of my day working on the site (www.mithirdparties.org) and thought I might as well end it by posting about the group here. I encourage third parties in other states with restrictive ballot access laws to form similar groups. Forgive my post for being short, but I’m tired and about to fall asleep.

Old-time libertarians will recall a lot of the names dropped in this 1988 High Times article about then Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ron Paul: Andre Marrou, Ed Clark, Dick Randolph, Murray Rothbard, John Hospers, Roger McBride, Tonie Nathan, David Bergland, Eric Garris, Paul Jacob, Tim Lewis, Norma Jean Almodovar, Mark Ford, and Ed Crane. [...]

GOPUSA has published an article by Eric Dondero about Ron Paul:

In the Fall of ‘91 Burt Blumert, Paul’s longtime partner with his Camino Coins Gold business in Burlingame, CA and the Ron Paul Investment Letter, finally secured permission from Paul to launch an exploratory committee, and to raise money for the effort. Paul himself wanted [...]

Now onto a political party, that, while being a state and not a national party, it nevertheless attracted a good amount of attention at the time, being the latest attempt to qualify a white supremacist political party and it’s alleged candidates on the ballot.

The White Peoples Party was started in 2005 by members of the [...]

“Your days of punching the Republican Party in the nose without having someone swing back are over,” wrote Chuck Muth to Libertarians in 2001.

A couple of days ago, Muth scribed, “And if the GOP doesn’t get its limited-government act together soon, the party that replaced the Whigs could well end up going the way of [...]

I have decided to do something new here on Third Party Watch. I will begin a series on third-parties that are inactive, small, and nearly defunct, yet are still trying to maintain life support of some kind.
Basically, it will be on third-parties whose status is much like the Prohibition Party.

The first party that I shall [...]

Crockford provides some interesting third party historical tidbits:

In 1966, in a speech given in Frogmore, South Carolina, the Reverend Martin Luther King said, “You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out [...]

I hate to rehash old news, but I was just thinking that we haven’t received disgraced campaign manager Allen Hacker’s final report in last year’s Badnarik for Congress race (CD-10 in Texas).

Minneapolis City Councilman Cam Gordon, a member of the Green Party, on his 2005 election, and his activist and candidate history.

Includes discussion of his campaign strategies & experiences and of Minneapolis’ diverse Ward Two. Interviewed at Minneapolis City Hall on August 6th, 2007 by California Green Mike Feinstein.

This is kind of a funny video from last year, during the fallout from her punching of a Capitol police office. Congresswoman McKinney gets caught with her microphone on after she dodges some questions and walks out of the room, so she comes back and makes it clear that the audio is not allowed [...]

This is sort of a strange, heavily sarcastic, and very uncomfortable interview with Sandra Bernhard on the David Letterman show back in 1988.

I don’t think he was being particularly serious, but when the subject of politics comes up Dave jokes that he’s planning on voting for Ron Paul. It’s about 2 minutes into the [...]

In advance of his expected run for re-election in 2002, this cute but relatively lame video game was designed but not actually released. Some of the concepts are kind of funny and it might make for a fun online game…

California Green activist Mike Feinstein appears on a television debate program to discuss the 1996 Presidential election and Ralph Nader’s first run for office.

And another video from 11 days later at the Green Party’s national convention in which Nader was nominated. This includes a VP acceptance speech (via video) from Winona LaDuke, followed [...]

I was looking for a quote from Andre Marrou earlier this evening and I wound up stumbling onto this item from a 1996 edition of LP News. Here’s the link along with a few amusing quotes and observations…

http://www.lp.org/lpn/9612-Browne.html

Basically they say that Harry Browne’s showing of about 470,000 was a disappointment but a good [...]

Ron Paul being interviewed as the Libertarian nominee on a television program during the 1988 Presidential campaign…

Libertarian nominee Ron Paul appears on the absolutely insane Morton Downey, Jr. program and engages in a heated “debate” with the host…

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