This has been my primary issue with our top-two system. While I understand and, to a degree, agree with the perspective of the Parties (primary voting should be restricted to party registrants - it's the Party picking a candidate - or just let Parties convene in order to pick candidates, and get rid of the primary for partisan races altogether), the thing that bothers me most is voter disenfranchisement.

I agree that it is highly unlikely that a third party candidate can win in a general election, but forcing our general elections to basically be shit shows between just a D and an R leaves out options for folks who don't want to vote for either. I would rather someone throw their vote away on a Green Party or Libertarian candidate than not vote - either at all, or in a specific race.

Finally, we can't have a viable third party unless we allow ballot access. The top two primary deprives third parties of that access, and that is not fair. I mean, I don't mind that Democrats get to pwn the shit out of it because of the system, but that doesn't make it right.

actually I think in-state elections are the only ones that third party candidates have a reasonable chance to win, at least as long as we have first-past-the-post elections.

Didn't Godden almost lose to a Green?

@3: Nope, but she did beat a Greenie by a 78 percent to 21 percent margin in 2007.

@5 Wow, I can't think of anyone who agrees with either of those sentiments. Nice job with the strawman war.

I don't think a third party candidate has any chance whatsoever in a presidential race. Ross Perot and Ralph Nader were the most notable attempts in the last 100 years, and both came in very distant third places, and really only served to split off a small faction of one or the other majority party. So as a practical matter, in the US, the presidential race has become a 2 party race.

But that isn't true on the state and local level. While uncommon, 3rd party candidates do occasionally win down-ballot offices. They usually have to have a lot of name recognition or charisma to overcome the two parties we are all accustomed to. Like Jesse Ventura winning as governor in MN. Greens have won a handful of other smaller state offices. So it is possible, however small the chances are.

But it really is an uphill battle. I've been voting for 30 years now, and a vast majority of 3rd party candidates I remember seeing over the years have been total nutters. Most of the fringe candidates seem like real loons. It is really hard for me to even take them seriously any more. I expect that is true of a lot of voters. So a real 3rd party candidate has a lot of built in bias to overcome. It isn't just them; it is the whole history of 3rd party candidates in this area.

I see no reason why Socialist Alternative should be dismissed so lightly.

In another Progressive state, the Vermont Progressive Party (which openly declares itself to be Socialist) holds 2 seats int eh state Senate and 5 seats in the state House.

At a national level, it may be a few years before SA can win a seat in the federal legislature. But in our state legislature?

Frank Chopp had better watch his ass.

@8: Ralph Nader was NOT one of the most notable attempts in the last 100 years. Precisely 100 years ago Teddy Roosevelt as a Bull Moose Progressive and Eugene Debs as a Socialist each drew a far higher percentage than Nader ever did as a Green. In 1948, Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond and Progressive Henry Wallace both made stronger showings, as did George Wallace running as a right-wing populist in 1968. I might be missing another (possibly one of Debs's other runs) who showed considerably stronger than Nader.

The question to ask isn't if third-party candidates should run. They already are. The question to ask is how to make third-party candidates viable.

There are already many more third-party/independent candidates running than most people realize (there were several in the primary we just had). There are also many (technically) non-partisan races here at the local level yet, unless self-financed, someone still has to get the backing and resources of a major party to have a decent shot at winning.

Nothing that is happening now will change unless a party/candidate has a fear of losing votes or money. As long as people allow themselves to get so distracted by supposed evilness of the other party that they feel lip-service and inaction by their own party is acceptable, nothing will change. Things will only change when people stop voting/donating by party, and start voting/donating by progress on issues (read: holding people accountable).

@11: John Anderson, 1980.

in the 43rd there effectively is no Republican party. The second party is the Socialist Alliance. This is what I like about the top two primary. There's no lock in for Dems and Reps. Third parties will never succeed from the top down, but from the bottom up third parties could find themselves the second party in some districts.

If you continue to vote within the confines of the present duopoly, and you want to know who to blame for the state of things, you need only look in the mirror.

@6 - Strawman means misrepresenting an opponent's position and arguing against that misrepresentation rather than their real position.

But anonymous at @5 is actually representing her position. From her website:

Take the giant corporations that dominate Washington state such as Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon, into public ownership under democratic workers' control to be run for public good, not private profit.

I guess that's no surprise, since she's a socialist and all. But the strawman accusation you made doesn't hold up.

Anyone ever heard of Tommy Douglas and the parable of Mouseland?

@1, I think the top two gives voters more choice than having multiple parties. I look at races like the 36th and 46th - while both Sly Cann and Gerry Pollet are Democrats, they represent different visions of the party and have different issue profiles. So too with Noel and Gael, or Jessyn and Sarajane. Sure, they're all "Democrats", but they're having spirited discussions about what kind of party the Democratic Party should be, and I think that's just as healthy as pressure from third parties.

Nobody gives a shit about third-party candidates because third-party candidates are worthless EVEN IF ELECTED.

Sawant could be the second coming of Christ and have the best policy proposals in history and shit gold nuggets and she would still be a terrible, terrible candidate, and a terrible, terrible legislator, for this simple reason: INDIVIDUALS DON'T MATTER.

You don't achieve things in legislatures by having good ideas. You achieve things by building coalitions of 50% + 1. If you can't do that, you are UTTERLY WORTHLESS. Sawant has no coalition and no hope of ever being a part of one, let alone building one.

People talking about Sawant don't understand how democracy works. It's as simple as that.

"So do folks want third-party candidates to run? If so, what sort of candidates? And what races should they be running in?"

Thanks for asking, Dominic.

I've had this conversation a lot with the socialist and communists I know and I usually get dismissed by them as not understanding the problem. They want big change now and I think that's a little unrealistic to expect of Americans.

Here are my answers:
Yes. A person who cares about the issues they will be responsible for if they win. School boards, judges, city councils, and races that most people don't care about, especially in smaller cities.
During the Bush administration there was a lot written about how the religious right came to dominate the Republican party, but the radicals on the left didn't take these lessons to heart. Parties nowadays have to start small, build up and individual's name recognition, then take on the big parties. If the socialists or green party or moderate party or libertarian party or any of the also-ran parties started running for school boards and commissioner type positions in the late 90's/early 00's, there would probably be quite a few well known members of those parties that could run a higher profile campaign without all the snickering.
I was one of those people who wrote Sawant in for Chopp's position because I do want to see viable candidates from more than 2 parties. I'll be voting for her in the fall as well, even though I doubt she has a chance of winning because she's an unknown political entity and comes from a party that has been vilified for the last 100 years. I think experience could trump that vilification, but we don't see a lot of socialists becoming career politicians to build up that experience, which will leave most people un-trusting of that party.
One last point, if the 3rd parties really want to create a revolution in how we choose candidates, they should all get together and support instant runoff. Then maybe we wouldn't need to establish career politicians for these parties to get the public to trust them.

The only thing worse than a democrat or a republican is a socialist. At least the latter two pretend to believe in democracy and free elections.

Fnarf, as usual, is right. Or rather, correct.

And the point is not third parties; traditional multi-party countries, like Italy, Israel, France, etc., have MANY parties. You need at least two vaguely liberal and two vaguely conservative parties, none of which run crazy candidates, to be a serious multi-party country. Otherwise, the third party will drain off votes from either the conservative or the liberal party, which is counterproductive for any politically healthy country. Nader drained off just enough Dem votes in 2000; guess what happened.

The present two-party system came out of the Civil War. Before that, there was a different two-party system: The Whigs and Democrats. The Whigs and Democrats were beholden to the slave-owning plantation owners. Cotton was the most important crop in the U.S. at the time. But, the plantation system had it's own problems and limitations. For example, it destroyed the soil faster than it could find new land. So the slave-owners used there political control of the political system to protect their own system and ram through policies that brought them into collision with millions of people in this country (leaving aside the slaves and native americans, who were ruthlessly oppressed). Sound familiar? They went to war with Mexico, over-turned the Missouri Compromise, prevented the Homestead Act from passing (a bill that would have given land to the growing number of small farmers), used the Supreme Court to overturn anti-slavery laws in the North, etc, etc, etc. Their ruthless pursuit of their own narrow political agenda completed undermined support for the existing parties, giving rise to very favorable conditions for the rise of new politics in the form of the most succesful Third Party ever in the U.S. - the Republican Party.

The point is, today, Wall Street dominates our two parties and is using it's control to ruthlessly pursue it's own narrow interests, increasingly colliding with the interests of millions of people. This is giving rise to conditions that will increasingly make it even more favorable for new political parties in the U.S.

Nothing is permanent.

@Sugartit. Wall Street got every single reform they wanted over the past 30 years to run things the way they wanted. They ruined the U.S. economy, got bailed out, and then paid themselves bonuses. Socialists had nothing to do with it.

Microsoft? Why do so many talented computer programmers spend their free time building free open-source software like Linux? Because proprietary software is holding back their talent, creativity, and their sense of purpose. Imagine if MIcrosoft was open-source. Imagine what could be done. I bet the talented people who work for Microsoft would produce software 10x better than what exists if the constraints of a profit-seeking, self-interested corporate bureaucracy was removed.

Boeing??? First, Boeing is propped up by no-bid government contracts. There is very little water in the "We built this" argument with Boeing. You can also thank the publicly funded Defense Department for their publicly funded Research & Development. Second, have you ever built an airplane in a Boeing plant??? I asked this because you can go talk to the machinists yourself about how ridiculously inefficient it is to produce airplanes by a system of outsourced and subcontracted manufacturers. Of course, Boeing's motivation is profit, not efficiency. Anyway, the machinists will tell you stories of getting parts from outsourced factories - that could have been built by the machinists themselves - and then putting them together, and guess what?? They don't fit!

Meanwhile, tax-dodging Amazon runs sweatshops called warehouses.

The capitalist economy that you defend is inefficient, dysfunctional, and propped up by publicly funded bailouts. It produces ridiculous profits for the corporations, and meanwhile everyone else is in debt. Good luck defending that in the long run. That's why I'm a socialist because rather then deluding myself into believing the current system works, the reality is it only works for the people at the top, at the expense of working people. Socialism is about creating a world that works for working people.

No, primaries are where we sort out who will broadly represent the left, however it is currently defined, and who will do the same for the right.

The republican primary this year featured a rather robust campaign by a couple libertarians and guy just this side of being a complete theocrat. They got media time, had money, and got their message out just as much as any other. They lost, but they lost fair. In 2016 I'll be we'll see a decent run by a OWS/Socialist type candidate. Should be interesting, and like people like Paul have done for the right, move the dems toward the left.

The fact is that for as much as people talk about all these people who don't fit in to the system, there is just not that many of them outside of college and comment threads.

All third parties achieve is a winner who has the backing of much less than a majority as opposed to the current system which at least represents a rough agreement on what direction the government should slowly trend toward.

Kshama Sawant is pretty much the ideal third party candidate. Progressive, intelligent, and not tied to any corporate money whatsoever. I think she can definitely win, and represents this district much better than Frank Chopp. Donate to her campaign, since unfortunately most people won't vote for someone without money behind them.

I think you'll find the people who are making those comments are the same sorts of people who feel the need to bitch about anything and everything.

@30, yes, that's a good use of our money, because of course she can win against Frank Chopp, the guy who (although you may not like him) pretty much single-handedly held the Republican barbarians back last session in Olympia by holding onto the House. yes, she can win because she knows exactly what to do, and how to do it, and is familiar with all the players, and they're all really eager to work with her. We'll definitely support her, and you'll get a good job in her office. Or in the office of some similar candidate who will run in the future and presents all of the advantages that Sawant has. Or you'll get a job at Starbucks if you get through their training program.

In the meantime, please grow up. This kind of stuff gets tiresome.

32- Wtf? I have a well-paying job, I'm an adult, I've never met her or anyone working on her campaign, and I don't have any interest in a job in politics. I am excited about a candidate who is actually progressive running in my district, and she's the first politician I've donated to in years. You are vastly overestimating Frank Chopp's accomplishments, unless you consider pushing a regressive, centrist agenda an accomplishment.

Corporatists have captured the apparatus of both major parties, government and media. The only way out is via breaking up the duopoly despite the unconvincing denials of the "responsible adults who know all about democracy" (please, open your eyes, Democrats are as responsible as Rethugs for the current clusterfuck even if a small handful of Dems have said consistently the right things). Change won't happen through backroom deals but via a broadly popular mass movement. Until that happens, keep jeering if you must but try to not stand in the way of change.

Its far past time for ranked voting. You'd see more third party candidates if people could list second on third choices on ballots. It would be impossible for our anti intellectual news media to report on, though.

Well, I like the idea of a viable electable third party (Democratic Socialist would be idea, the Greens seem to go wacky for some odd reason, I mean Rosanne Barr?)

But for such a party to take hold or one of the two existing parties to radically realign themselves would take an even just short of what happened in the 1860's. And I would even throw it out there that the existing alignments could change to make the Dems conservative and the Retardicans more progressive (stranger things have happened).

But this change doesn't happen at the ballot box. I thought Occupy Wall Street could have been a start of such a change but as we found out it wasn't and died off really quickly.

So enjoy your two corporate owned parties and vote for the choice of a fast destruction of the US with Obama or a super duper fast destruction with Mittens Romney. Either way you are all fucked if you make less than $150K a year. It's just the speed that you want to be fucked up the ass being the choice. Oh, Obama may use some lube and whisper sweet nothings in your ear. So that's always a nice thing I suppose.

@33: Congrats on that well-paying job, but you aren't going to get hired in politics anytime soon. Chopp will get 80 percent of the vote in the final. What makes me think so? Well, he got 80 percent of the vote in the primary. You just aren't going to get thousands of Seattle Democrats to run for a dingbat commie, no matter if she is a law professor.

@25: I am going to disagree, with you and Fnarf (whom I normally nod my melon at). Individuals are actually very important to the democratic process, in that we elect people as much for their personalities as well as their stated positions. Fnarf is correct by stating that building the coalitions, once you get elected is what makes things work, but I am still going to vote for a "Sawant" over a "Michelle Bachmann-like" character based solely on their personalities.

And at @1 : you are absolutely correct, we truly need 3rd parties to be able to access the ballot. I have had the belief, for years, that we also truly need proportional representation in this country, that based on % of votes your party receives, you get allocated that number of seats in the legislature. Not sure how it would work for Presidential/Governor/Mayor campaigns, but I think it would be a sight better than this tyranny of the majority we currently have going.

What do I think about third-party candidates? We need instant-runoff voting, badly. The lesser of two ensconced evils just keeps getting worse and worse. Anyone in favor of a citizen initiative? At the very least, it would a great way of publicly exposing who supports the unrepresentative, undemocratic status quo. (Well ... if dark money is effectively outlawed.)

What do I think about third-party candidates? I wish Bernie Sanders were my US senator. I'll take a guy who's in the pocket of Big Maple Syrup over a gal who's in the pocket of Big Finance, Big Software, and Big Health any day.

44: We're so loony we probably go on blogs and spam nonsense anonymously in the comments with names like "Sugartit" (jk - I don't think anybody's that loony)

Greens and/or Socialists should run in races where Republicans are uncompetitive (and by "uncompetitive" I mean "always receive less than a third of the vote"). This helps to strengthen the left by keeping Democrats from getting too comfortable and lazy in their uber-safe districts, and makes it easier to get rid of incumbent Dems who are corrupt and/or incompetent.

In races where Republicans are competitive, however, a third party can never be anything but a spoiler and they should stay out.

I'm not voting for Frank chopp , really happy to have a choice.

Canada is a good example of what can happen when multiple party alligecies divide a constituiency into bickering factions. The country has been steared into a permanent economy of resource extraction, a survailence state with shrinking civil rights. With no clear majority dealmakers like Premier Harper rule a country with impunity.

@49 Just like the US then?

Michael P's comment about the top two hurting 3rd parties is duplicitous partisan B.S. - the top two allows one to vote for a third party, in the primary, without risk of some 3 way dynamic contrary to your interests. If, per chance, the third party candidate advances, fantastic!

Realistically, it is more likely that we'll see a successful in-party challenge with the top two, and, so far as I know, it has not happened yet. This would have more effect than a single 3rd party victory, at this time.

A third party will be awesome. Once we change to a Parliamentary system. Which will happen... after the robot rebellion and the invention of warp drive.

Go, Kshama! Yours is truly a grass-roots populist campaign at its brightest and boldest! We shouldn't have to choose between the 10 cents-worth of actual difference when in office, of either of the 2 parties of big business, and for each and every electoral cycle evermore. Working people need independent workingclass politics and candidacies, and I therefore applaud your campaign that is putting forward a real and meaningful choice for voters.

I think it is deplorable, Kshama, that election officials are transparently baulking your campaign, by pointedly refusing to state your party preference on the ballot; thus do brazen hacks disdain, disparage, seek to thwart, and disregard the people's real choice. Nor, quite evidently by their actions, do these party hacks want any voter to see just who you are - and just exactly what you espouse and whom you represent - or acknowledge the people's right to make an informed decision to choose you instead of rubberstamping tweedledee/tweedledum politics and business as usual of the bosses.

It's this cynical, undemocratic refusal of community rights - the underhanded attempt to lock up and nullify the voting process itself - that has brought about the Kshama Sawant campaign's court action. The Republicrats and their Wall Street bosses have a straightforward, totally self-interested agenda: squelch any real voter choice and any vibrant grassroots democratic alternative to the 2-party duopoly whenever and wherever it rears its head in defiance of the status quo.

Independent workingclass politics and campaigns like yours, Kshama, go hand in hand with building a genuine community-wide alternative to uphold democratic economic demands and decisions of ordinary working people. We need a party for the millions not the millionaires! All best wishes and good luck to your terrific campaign, and to righteous victory in your suit, Kshama! My sincere thanks to your campaign volunteers and all your supporters, for helping you to build and defend a true People's Campaign for economic democracy!

As for all you government hackworthies seeking to run roughshod over the community and tamp down votes for Kshama: Shame On You!

- Tom Potter (political preference: Socialist Alternative). I reside in Cambridge, MA, am a proud member of Socialist Alternative and a rank-and-file member of AFSCME Local 3650 Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (in each case, for over 20 years). I've been working as a faculty secretary at Harvard Law School since 1986.

More choices should always be supported within a democracy, otherwise what kind of democracy is it?
Those who voted for Sawant knew they were voting for a socialist. She was able to list her party preference for the other race, if she switches races she should be able to keep her party preference!