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49 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
49 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
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THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM MYTH:
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Presidential Elections:
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The Multi-Partisan Truth
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by Jackie Bradbury, Secretary
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Missouri Libertarian Party
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People in the United States have been clinging to a myth
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for a very long time now - that the United States is a two
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party system. Heck, they use the term "bipartisan" as if it
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means that all views are represented, when in fact it is only
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two opinions out of many. We Libertarians know this is
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incorrect (and we have been using the term ourselves lately in
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Columbia, meaning Libertarians and Greens), but it's nice to
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have it verified by outside sources.
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The source I used is my old college days history
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textbook: _Essentials_Of_American_History_. It lists all of
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the Presidential elections from 1789 (I added 1988 and 1992):
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it lists most of the candidates who got anything near a
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significant vote total or an electoral vote.
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See the chart below (Sysop note: adjoining file). As you
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can see, in fact a _three-way_ race is more common than any
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other. Three-way races make up 44% of all of our Presidential
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elections, as a matter of fact (23 out of 52 total), and two-
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candidate races only make up 37% of all Presidential elections
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in history... We have even had a few four and five-way races
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as well (19% of all elections). And as an interesting note,
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look at how rare a two-way race is in the 20th Century as
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compared to the previous one. Perhaps we could speculate WHY
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the cycle swings from multi-candidate elections to two-
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candidate elections.
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It may have something to do with social upheaval - you
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can point to many of the multi-party swings and they tend to
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correspond with social movements such as women's suffrage, the
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civil rights movement, etc. They also somewhat correspond to
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economic stability as well, such as the current economic
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crisis (our national debt) corresponds with the current multi-
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candidate swing in the cycle. I'm sure a more competent
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political scientist than I can figure out what happens and
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why: the important thing is that, whatever the reasons, you
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can see that indeed multi-candidate and multi-partisan
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politics are no strangers to democracy in the United States.
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(taken from the SHOW ME FREEDOM, June 1993 issue, a
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publication of the Missouri Libertarian Party).
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