Ballot Access - Other Obstacles Facing Third Parties

Other Obstacles Facing Third Parties

The growth of any third political party in the United States faces extremely challenging obstacles, among them restrictive ballot access. Other obstacles often cited as barriers to third-party growth include:

• Campaign funding reimbursement for any political party that gets at least 5% of the vote—implemented in many states "to help smaller parties"—typically helps the two biggest parties
• Laws intended to fight corporate donations, with loopholes that require teams of lawyers to navigate the laws
• The role of corporate money in propping up the two established parties
• The allegedly related general reluctance of news organizations to cover minor political party campaigns
• Moderate voters being divided between the major parties, or registered independent, so that both major primaries are hostile to moderate or independent candidates
• Politically motivated gerrymandering of election districts by those already in power, in order to reduce or eliminate political competition (two-party proponents would argue that the minority party in that district should just nominate a more centrist candidate relative to that district);
• Plurality voting scaring voters from voting for any candidate other than the lesser of evils, who is reported to have a chance of winning
• The absence of proportional representation
• The public view that third parties have no chance of beating the worse of evils, and are therefore a wasted vote
• Campaign costs of convincing interested voters that the party nominee has a chance of winning, and regaining that trust after an election where the third party got the third-most votes (not a problem with instant-runoff voting or condorcet voting)