Third Parties in U.S. History

Below is an excerpt from the introduction of Micah Sifry's book, Spoiling For a Fight: Third Party Politics in America. Sifry is an expert on third parties, both historically and currently. This excerpt describes the strength of minor parties in previous decades, and the obstacles that face such parties today.

From the Introduction of Spoiling For a Fight: Third Party Politics in America

Alternative points of view do not lack support in American public opinion. Substantial numbers of Americans-in some cases majorities-support aid to poor children, cuts in corporate welfare, reductions in military spending, universal health care insurance, alternatives to the drug war, labor and environmental protections in trade agreements, tougher measures to guarantee clean air, water and food, a living wage, more democratic oversight of federal banking policy, burden sharing with our overseas allies, more investment in energy conservation and alternative fuels, and a comprehensive overhaul of the campaign finance system, to take some of the major issues that were not raised in the 2000 presidential election.

But these choices are rarely presented to the voters for ratification because the two major political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, have made it exceedingly difficult for parties and candidates with dissenting views to share space with them on the civic stage. It's as if two football teams had agreed to play only between their respective 40-yard lines-and to keep other teams that want to use the whole field out of the stadium.

The Third-Party Prospect
Other political parties-what we commonly call third parties-(and independent political candidates) are those other teams. Historically, third parties have led the way in opening up discussion of new issues. The abolition of slavery, women's right to vote, the direct election of U.S. senators, initiative and referendum powers, the progressive income tax, shorter working hours, child labor laws, federal farm aid, and unemployment insurance-all these changes came about because of the pressures first mobilized by minor political parties. While most of the concerns raised by third parties have been progressive, they have sometimes also been repositories of resentment-pushing for restrictions on immigrants or crackdowns on crime. In general, third (and fourth and fifth) parties broaden the permitted boundaries of public discussion. When they are politically successful, third parties also offer protection to their supporters from the tendency, always present, of the holders of power to use the state to suppress unwanted dissent.

At different times, third parties have had a substantial presence in Congress and state capitols. The People's Party elected two senators and eight congressmen in 1890, a number that peaked at five senators and twenty-two congressmen six years later. In all, between 1890 and 1902, the states of Kansas, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Idaho, Alabama, and Arkansas all sent People's Party representatives to Congress. During the same period, People's Party members also held governor's offices in Colorado, Kansas, and South Dakota. The Socialist Party had a member of Congress from either New York or Wisconsin in nearly every election cycle from 1910 to 1928, along with a substantial number of municipal officials, even mayors of major cities, until 1960. The Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota thrived in the 1920s and 1930s, electing a number of senators and representatives to Congress and holding the governor's mansion from 1930 to 1938. Prohibitionists elected the governor of Florida in 1916 and sent a representative to Congress from Los Angeles for three consecutive terms between 1914 and 1920; they also helped push through the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution banning the manufacture or sale of liquor (which was repealed thirteen years later). The party was, moreover, the first to demand women's suffrage (in 1872); it was joined later by the short-lived women's Equal Rights Party (1884-1888) and later by the Socialists (in 1904).

Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Progressives were elected to Congress from the states of Washington, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana between 1912 and 1918; later, followers of Wisconsin's "Fighting Bob" LaFollette would send a number of their Progressive Party leaders to Congress and the statehouse between 1934 and 1946. In New York City, the American Labor Party sent two representatives to Congress at its height between 1946 and 1948. (And thanks to the brief use of proportional representation, the ALP elected several members to New York's city council, and even the Communist Party had two council members at one point in the early 1940s.) Popular pressures mobilized by Upton Sinclair's 1934 "End Poverty in California" gubernatorial campaign, along with the Huey Long and Francis Townsend populist movements, undoubtedly helped push President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the left and aided the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Similarly, the Progressive presidential campaign of Henry Wallace in 1948 prompted Harry Truman to tack left on housing, health care, and civil rights.

But third parties, even regionally based parties, have not played such a substantial role in American politics for more than fifty years. Why? Because the two major parties, often acting in concert, took steps to close down the third-party option. Laws regulating ballot access were tightened, giving the Democrats and Republicans a tremendous advantage; rules governing voter registration were toughened so as to disenfranchise poor and minority citizens; fusion, in which smaller parties cross-endorsed candidates of other parties but had their votes counted on their own line, was banned; membership in third parties, especially of the left, was stigmatized as fringe and unpatriotic. As television came to dominate public life, the costs of campaigning and gaining visibility also worked to deter and suppress third-party candidates.

Mainstream political scientists like to say that the American two-party system is a natural product of something called "Duverger's Law"-the claim, made by Maurice Duverger, that winner-take-all systems that award representation by single-member districts cause voters to congregate around one of two parties in almost mechanical fashion. The actual history of American politics shows that despite such structural choices we had a thriving multiparty system until the early 1900s, when most of these deliberate steps were taken to suppress insurgent third parties and disruptive voters. In addition, it's hardly correct to say that we have a two-party system today, outside of the fight for the presidency and the balance of control in Congress. Most Americans live in defacto one-party districts, where even a vote for a second party is a so-called wasted vote.

You can read more and purchase the book from www.spoilingforafight.com.