Presidential Ballot Will Be Crowded With Third Party Candidates
RFK Jr. predicts all 50 states, Libertarian Party expects at least 48, Green Party over 30, and a still-waffling No Labels 32.
The next general-election presidential poll you see will almost certainly be inaccurate.
Not because today's projected percentages for President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump won't match what goes down in November; that's a near-certainty. But rather, because the majority of polls right now list just those two candidates, in a voter-disillusioned year where most states' ballots will feature at least five, maybe six.
And we're not just talking about repeat randos like Rocky De La Fuente, either—independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with by far the highest favorability ratings in the race, has consistently polled higher than any nontraditional presidential candidate since Ross Perot in 1992. The centrist 501(c)(4) nonprofit No Labels, which is busy racking up ballot access in preparation for a post-Super Tuesday decision about whether to enter the fray, has been eyeing such nationally known figures as Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.) and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Jill Stein, with more name recognition than any Green candidate since Ralph Nader, is again seeking the nomination of a party confident about improving on its 30 ballot lines from 2020. And the Libertarian Party (L.P.) may have lesser-known presidential candidates running thus far but is riding a three-election streak of third-place finishes, enjoys a large lead in third party registration, and expects to be on the ballot in 48 states. "I think that 47 would be a failure," said Libertarian National Chair Angela McArdle.
When it comes to ballot access, an election-year February is a lot like spring training in Major League Baseball—every team predicts a pennant, players are in the best shape of their lives, etc. And the timeline for frequently onerous and always arbitrary state-by-state criteria is confusing enough to render much of the discussion about potential third party effects speculative, even conspiratorial.
What we do know is this: As of January 26, according to the indispensable Ballot Access News, the L.P. was on the ballot in 35 states, the Green Party 19, No Labels 12 (that number is now 14), the Constitution Party 12, and RFK Jr. just one. For the three holdover parties, those numbers represent slight declines from where they were four years ago.
This does not remotely mean that Kennedy will lag behind the Constitution Party, whose 2020 nominee, Don Blankenship, ended up on 18 ballots and received just 0.04 percent of the vote. It instead means that pre-existing political parties are pre-qualified for certain states based on past performance and that the deadlines for every state except Utah (which will have at least a half-dozen names on the ballot, including Kennedy's) are in the future, beginning with North Carolina on May 18.
"We won't really know anything in February much," Ballot Access News Editor Richard Winger says. "You'll have to wait 'til March."
RFK Jr. is sitting on dollar amounts that all the other long-toiling third parties can only dream about. Federal Election Commission reports released this week showed the Kennedy campaign closing 2023 with $5.4 million cash in hand, while his biggest supporting super PAC, American Values, ended the year with $14.8 million in the bank. Such money can go a long way in paying for petitioners in the three dozen or so states where independent candidates need to present 10,000 or fewer valid signatures to get on the ballot.
The Kennedy campaign—whose ballot access page is the niftiest in the biz—effectively reduced its signature requirements by a whopping quarter-million voters in mid-January, by announcing the formation of the We the People Party in five states (California, Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi, and North Carolina), as well as the Texas Independent Party. In some states, like California, independent candidates have a much larger signature-gathering requirement than political parties (219,403 to an estimated 75,000, according to Ballot Access News); in others, such as Idaho, the ratio is reversed: just 1,000 for independents, 17,000 for parties.
"It's a heavy lift," Kennedy Press Secretary Stefanie Spear says. "Every state has their own rules, and some are easier than others….The Kennedy campaign is up to the task." Spear, who is confident that RFK Jr. will be on the ballot "in all 50 states and the District of Columbia," blamed the two-party system for making competitors spend a disproportionate amount of their time jumping through those procedural hoops. "Ballot access is the name of the game right now," she says.
Richard Winger, for one, thinks that 50-state access for Kennedy is achievable, given the way the campaign has approached the problem to date, including having volunteers petition outside polling places during the New Hampshire primaries and exceeding the needed 3,000 signatures. "I think he can probably do it," Winger says. "I was impressed that he got on in New Hampshire in one day."
The two biggest ballot roadblocks for non-Democratic/Republican presidential candidates are in two of the country's three largest progressive-run states: New York and Illinois. "There are the two problem-child states right now," the L.P.'s McArdle says.
New York in 2019 moved up its petitioning deadline from August to May, then in 2020 jacked up the threshold for third parties to maintain their ballot status from 50,000 votes in the previous gubernatorial or presidential election to 130,000, or 2 percent of the vote. The upshot? "We only have six weeks to gather 45,000 verified signatures," says Green Party Ballot Access Committee Co-Chair Tony Ndege. "So that means we're really going to have to shoot for over 60,000, really close to the 70,000. And that's a really tall order. Very few parties, and almost no one without millions of dollars, have been able to achieve that."
Ndege, like many people who work in these trenches, expresses something close to wonder when talking about the volume of challenges. "It's just insane," he said. "You can spend four years studying it, nothing but that, and it's still very difficult, and it always changes too, because that's how politics works." Yet he's bullish for the Greens this year. "We're definitely far ahead of where we were in 2020," he says, predicting that the party will "absolutely" clear that election's 30 ballot-qualified states, and is pushing toward the goal of matching 2016's 45.
The biggest wild card in the third party/independent space right now is No Labels, since there is still no indication whether, let alone how, the problem-solving centrists will compete against Trump and Biden. Amid a flurry of lawsuits and other legal maneuvers, the organization is giving itself until March to make a decision, and then (if the answer is "yes") rush to select a ticket.
The comparative lateness of those decisions will keep the organization from obtaining clean ballot access everywhere. But still, says No Labels Chief Strategist Ryan Clancy, the group is on target to be on the ballot in 32 states.
"The reason for us to get 32," Clancy says, "is there's 18 states where they fall into one of two categories: Either one, you need to have a named candidate; or two, the threshold for a candidate is just much lower than a group like No Labels. So for example, a state might require No Labels to get 30,000 signatures, whereas a candidate would only have to get 3,000….So the way this would work is, in the end, No Labels will get 32. If we offer our ballot line to a ticket, the campaign itself would be responsible for getting those final 18. The good news, though, is we are absolutely ahead of schedule, relative to basically anybody else historically. Just for context, Ross Perot at this point in 1992 hadn't even started getting signatures, and he ended up on all 50 states by September. So we're exactly where we need to be."
The Green Party, too, will be looking to fill ballot gaps with individual exertions from their eventual nominee.
Because of the group's comparatively large war chest and potentially higher-profile candidates, No Labels has already attracted a nearly vicious level of interest from political professionals looking to remove obstacles from the reelection of Joe Biden.
"Through every channel we have, to their donors, their friends, the press, everyone—everyone—should send the message: If you have one fingernail clipping of a skeleton in your closet, we will find it," a participant in a December anti–No Labels strategy session attended by the likes of Move On and The Lincoln Project said, according to Semafor. "If you think you were vetted when you ran for governor, you're insane. That was nothing. We are going to come at you with every gun we can possibly find. We did not do that with Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, we should have, and we will not make that mistake again."
Clancy, who used to be a speechwriter for Biden, said he has been surprised by the vitriol. "Look, I'm not naive. I didn't expect either party would welcome us with open arms," he says. "But the depth of the cynicism and hypocrisy has surprised me. Because if you listen to the groups that are coming after us,…they all wrap themselves in the banner of protecting democracy, saving our republic. So it's all this high-minded B.S., and yet what they're really doing is just the most bare-knuckled, ruthless things they can. Not just the lawfare kind of stuff…but threatening donors, candidates."
While No Labels deliberates, the main public third-party focus is likely to remain on Kennedy, which, along with some shared policy interests, is one reason that some L.P. officials are nurturing relationships with the independent, including inviting him (along with Cornel West) to the California Libertarian Party convention in late February.
CNN's Michael Smerconish set off a round of headlines and intra-Libertarian discussion last week by asking a mostly demurring RFK Jr. about his interest in seeking the L.P. nomination in late May. It would be "a big controversy," McArdle says, "but it would definitely save us on ballot access."
"We can go with Bobby Kennedy and get 50-state ballot access very easily, or we can stick very closely to our principles, because he does deviate from our platform in a handful of areas at least," McArdle continues. "But I want us to be sober about the decision we make, conscious of it, and to not have regrets and sour grapes."
Asked if a potential L.P. nomination factors into the Kennedy campaign's ballot-access deliberations, Press Secretary Spear said, "No."
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Too many choices is a direct threat to democracy.
Nobody needs 23 kinds of candidates.
Rest easy, there are still only two.
Only one uniparty.
Democrats: nobody needs 2 candidates.
Also Democrats: anyone who protested the accuracy of the last election is obviously an insurrectionist and shouldn’t be allowed on the ballot this time.
“No, no, no!!!!!!! Challenge a democrat and it’s the gulag!”
– Comrade Bernie
Um, beg your pardon, but in a representative democracy, anyone can petition for redress, anyone who qualifies for ballot access can run, and the rest of us can vote for whomever we choose. The DNC doesn’t get to block that, regardless of who they thin it helps or hurts. It’s voter suppression and it’s illegal as well as unconstitutional.
When the two major parties do their jobs adequately, and actually REPRESENT voters, third-party candidacies are few, scattered and unimpactful.
When the two legacy parties do a poor job of representing popular will — for example, by giving voters candidates who 60% (Trump) to 65% (Biden) of their own parties don’t want, and giving us a rematch that 69% of voters don’t want — then you get more third-party candidates.
Check your sarcasm meter, it appears to be malfunctioning.
” . . . the problem-solving centrists . . . ”
How can you say that when you have no idea if they will run, who they will run, or what the platform will be?
Oh, wait. Welcome to Reason.
Are you sure it wasn’t tongue-in-cheek?
We are talking about a writer that thinks murdering people he disagrees with on policy is a good idea.
The problem is that we’re already familiar with the types of solutions that centrists come up with.
Yeah, like the Civil Rights Act, balanced budgets throughout the 1990s, social Security and Medicare the Civil War. The centrist-driven programs and initiatives fail every time!
“social Security and Medicare”
FDR and LBJ weren’t centrists
Also, to quote an old song “what have you done for me lately?”
And you forgot to mention: COVID 19 Lockdowns, Wallstreet bailouts, Endless war, Massive debt, warrantless surveillance, pressuring/”working with” tech companies to censor “disinformation”, and since you decided go with oldies: that always reliable government program the War on Drugs.
Amd really, what problem hve ‘the centrists’ ever solved? Centrist solutions are typically watered down versions of the democrat agenda implemented a little more slowly.
Fuck the centrists. Americans are at war with the Marxist democrat horde. Case closed.
I’m pretty sure we know at least that they’ll pick whoever they think would be the most effective at syphoning votes from Trump, since they’re actually a NeverTrump op.
And who are the centrists? Are we talking statistically? Where the centrists are those one deviation from the mean left or right? That’s 66.6%. Hey that’s a majority. But, it’s not a majority that agrees, even on a plurality of issues. And is it a normal distribution? Or is it biased left or right? And are the centrists on every issue? Or again, are we labeling them centrists because they mean of their beliefs places them in the center? And are those beliefs normally distributed? Maybe I’m pro 2A, small government, low taxes, state and individual rights, but I don’t know even more pro LGBTQ+ issues or whatever, enough that the majority of my stances places me on the right side of the spectrum but a minority, of overall importance, to me personally, pulls me to the mean. Or vice versa. Maybe, on most issues, I’m pretty squishy, they’re not that important but on a single overriding issue, I’m very diehard, and vote as a single issue voter. The label centrists is a lot of bullshit, created by lieing with statistics because no one wants to be identified with the extremes, while also being false because people have different motivations, are not homogeneous in their beliefs and values, etc. it’s really not even a useful lie.
Take me personally for example. I’m pragmatically pro-choice but morally I think abortions are reprehensible in just about every case, and I support fairly strict restrictions after 16 weeks, but I’m very strongly pro 1 and 2A. So, in scenario one you have two candidates that meet my criteria on 1 and 2 amendment issues and one is ban all abortions while the other is strongly pro choice, I’ll probably pick the latter (depending on other variables, e.g. their stances on National Security etc). Second scenario, both are similar on abortion with limitations after some point in the 2nd trimester. But one believes the government should regulate what churches can or can’t say in public, e.g. free to worship but in private, not in public, while the other is full defense of all religious expression. It’s going to be the latter. Am I centrist or a true independent? Not really because I see very few Democrats who check enough boxes on the 1st and 2nd Amendment to warrant my vote, and abortion just isn’t enough of an issue to override the other two concerns (of course there’s a variety of other issues that concern me and impact my voting).
Yeah I think a lot of people claim to centrists as a form of virtue signaling. They don’t want to get muddied up defending their positions or lack thereof and they can blame everybody else when the shit goes bad.
‘Presidential Ballot Will Be Crowded With Third Party Candidates’
Wanna bet?
Not in Democrat controlled battleground states
That depends. They tend to allow third parties that split the R vote but not the D vote
Sometimes even helping parties like the LP and Constitution party gather signatures to qualify. And a note to the only one true Libertarian ™, before his gray box chimes in, most LP voters lean more Republican than Democrat if no LP candidate available. That doesn’t mean the GOP deserves or own those votes, just that the DNC is aware of this paradigm and tries to exploit it. Due to keep the Green party of ballots, while actively assisting to get the LP and Constitution Parties onto those same ballots. If it were up to me all the qualifications needed for ballot access would be a valid US birth certificate, to prove you’re 35+ yo and a natural born US citizen (or if born out of the country, proof your parents were citizens and that they never gave up their or your citizenship).
Good luck with that.
If I bother to vote – I will continue to vote for the loser.
Does that include Biden?
sarcasmic made it onto the ballot?
Another Kleptocracy voter fails to grok the meaning of winning. What is winning? (http://bit.ly/3XV2fWQ)
The two biggest ballot roadblocks for non-Democratic/Republican presidential candidates are in two of the country’s three largest progressive-run states: New York and Illinois.
Just Democrats defending democracy, as usual.
This time by making your ballot quicker to read.
RFK jr is talking out his arse if he thinks he’s going to be on all 50 states ballots (and what about the territories and possessions – or did he forget about them?).
If the LP can manage 48 that will be a miracle by itself.
More than anything, Biden and his Obama administration puppeteers need to go.
RFK jr is doing so well bc he appears to be taki votes from Trump. If he was a threat to Biden, we wouldn’t be hearing about him
I haven’t been hearing much about him at all lately. In fact, I forgot he was running. The only candidate I hear less about from the media is our current president.
By 2016 the LP had edged out all the communo-fascist “third” parties. Then they infiltrated us–with a vengeance.
Per the polls I’ve seen, when his name is added onto the polls, Trump’s lead actually increases (basically he loses less than Biden, e.g. he holds more voters), Biden’s vote tends to decrease to levels just slightly higher than percentage of registered Democrats nationally, which means his non base support is weaker than Trump’s.
My impression as well. But most people end up voting R or D in the end if they vote at all so today’s polls probably don’t mean much. Unless RFK can reach Ross Perot momentum in the final stretch.
Four (or really three, No Labels is dead) candidates hitting ballot access for over 270 EVs wouldn’t be unusual. Four did in 2008. Two did in each of 2012, 2016, and 2020. But there are always states where it’s a dozen-plus on the ballot, the really easy ones.
One thing this doesn’t mention is how petition signatures have become wildly more expensive than they used to be. Even that several million dollars RFK has won’t go nearly as far as it used to. The going rate is ten, twenty times, sometimes more what was typical per signature a few years ago. Demand is up (partly for candidates, but largely for ballot initiatives) and petitioning is slower and harder than it used to be.
The LP is not going to get to 48, they’ve already lost more than that just from state parties that have left the LNC. They will be lucky to hit 40. And that’s if the party doesn’t implode into schism even more than it already has at the convention. They don’t have any strong candidates running. And the national party is going bankrupt, dues-paying membership has collapsed by almost half from what it was pre-Mises Caucus running it into the ground.
With that much money to spend on it, RFK might do fairly well and get over 270 EVs, but he won’t get all 50.
Greens are realistic when they say 30, but talk about a low bar.
No Labels is going to fold without nominating anybody, so that’s moot.
I can remember when the LP was on the ballot in 50 States on a winning streak. Then came the no-borders anarchists and the smaller, harder, angrier Caucasian Christiano-fascist infiltraitors. Our vote share has been dropping toward zero since Gary’s pro-choice campaign frightened God’s Own Prohibitionists and the commie Dems alike. https://libertariantranslator.wordpress.com/2023/10/16/neutralizing-libertarians/
No Labels is dead and going to fold without nominating a ticket? Want to put some money on that? You can pick the amount.
The No Labels letter whining to DOJ and demanding they prosecute people for RICO for being mean to them was absolutely idiotic and embarrassing.
I know three people who’ve given up on voting for Biden /Democrats over it. (Seriously – no joke). One is a Democrat, one an Independent, and one a never Trumper. I have to think there are others.
You don’t see any inconsistency in conspiring to thwart ballot access while position yourself as “saving democracy”? That just seems wholly indefensible to me, especially from blue operatives who scream that voter ID is voter suppression.
Using threats to produce an action you want to achieve is fairly illegal, so no Rico charges are not ridiculous. Threatening to release embarrassing details unless someone does what you want them to do is a form of blackmail.
2024 is the year Hollywood predicted Kennedy… and “A Boy and His Dog.”
I said we would get at least 48 states. I didn’t say we would only get 48 states. We are planning to have 50 state ballot access.
Might as well say you’re planning to win the election, it would be about as credible a claim.
A plan is not a claim. A claim asserts something is fact, a plan is a blueprint to achieve a goal, ergo, I think almost every candidate plans to win the election. Few run to lose. That doesn’t mean those plans are realistic (I’ve had plans as to what I would do if I won the lotto, but my chances are basically zero, since I don’t even buy a ticket 99.9999% of the time).
Vote NOTC: None Of These Candidates.
One of the ~ and the weakest~ possible objection to voting “None Of These Candidates: could be from those who would claim that NOTC would undercut efforts by Third, Fourth, Fifth, etc Parties to have a real impact in elections, and thus government and governance, by taking support and votes away from them, their candidates, and their agendas.
At this point~ and with very, very few exceptions as far as actually, really impacting the outcome of any election over the past 120 years~ any votes for any and all Third Party Candidates are essentially wasted, other than providing the voter with the personal satisfaction of voting her or his conscience, and of, somehow, “sending a message.” That is a principal reason that the Puling Political Class would be so quick to claim it.
And in present day America, no Third Party built on any particular ideology and focused on any specific issues, by itself, is in a position to have any effective impact whatsoever on any election whatsoever, let alone on how the government is run after the election.
If, on the other hand, NOTC was a choice on all ballots; and if all Third Party voters would add their vote to all those Americans who reject both of the major party’s candidates by voting NOTC; and if the RPC had to then go back to the drawing board for another election with different candidates and a different set of promises: If all that happened, Third Partiers would have a much bigger say in how things are run in this country than they do now, or have ever had in the past.
Note: This is an extract from “# NOTC24: A Real Choice, Alternative, and Antidote for Americans in Election2024,” which answers the Question: “Are there any alternatives to and antidotes for what America’s Ruling Political Class will give the American Voters on Election Day, 2024?”
In Virginia, if you write in “none of the above” they consider it a blank entry, and it’s not counted. Don’t know about other states, but I’d guess that some do the same.
Nevada puts “None of These Candidates” on ballots, but it still doesn’t really count. NOTC can’t win, even if it gets the most votes the actual human who got the most votes is deemed the winner.
They’re called undervotes in Illinois and the parties keep close track of the numbers.
The fact that the Libertarian Party is even considering RFK Jr shows that it has lost all sense. His crackpot attacks on well established vaccines has manged to move challenging the actually problematic MRNA vaccines into the crackpot zone.
Here are Bobby’s fascistic policies:
https://www.kennedy24.com/economy
Basically, he advocates a complete government takeover of the economy. The man is a worse piece of crap than (Biden x Trump)^2 yet, the “Libertarian” Party is actually considering this fascist asshole?
They blame the Mises Caucus but fail to understand the Mises Caucus is largely a result of shit like this, the same as Trump isn’t really driving the GOP, but a reaction to decades of growing disconnect with GOP voters and the party elite. The paradigm shift is largely a revolt against the elite, in America, in the GOP, in the LP, El Salvador, Argentina, Netherlands, France, Germany, Hungary, etc. And the elite simply don’t get it, so the attack the dissenters rather than try to understand them or accommodate them. Generally, when this has occurred in history it’s resulted in pitchforks and bonfire time, and probably a lot of people loosing their heads, stood against a wall, hung from a tree etc.
The more elites do to contain or crush the dissenters the greater the chance it turns into pitchfork and bonfire/torches time.
R: Trump
D: Biden
I: RFK
May as well be
R: Insane Person
D: Insane Person
I: Insane Person
It’s not a real choice. Stop pretending like it is.
Well, the documented performance of one insane person is much better for individual freedoms than the others, so I have a choice.
Sorry you don’t.
Is he though? Because I don’t recall any specific example of him making anyone more free than they already were. He just kinda kept the status quo for awhile.
Isn’t that preferable to making things worse, given the available choices? Especially since the “worse” seems to include World War Three?
No, it’s not preferable.
“I’m going to make things worse.” vs. “I’m going to keep things bad.”
If we can’t do any better than that, then we deserve what we’re literally asking for, don’t we. And if that’s WW3, then so be it.
We have the opportunity to make better choices, and choose not to.
That’s on us. That’s on you, and me, and We The People.
Things were better for people. There was growing investment in small businesses, entrepreneurship, small capitalism on the rise even in economically depressed areas. Summer of Love and COVID put a real dampener on that and I don’t really expect Trump round 2 to have the same economic effects because one major lesson learned by anyone considering high risk pursuit of starting a business is we can’t trust policy to stay stable long enough to make a profit.
And THAT is why stuff must go through the legislature and not EOs and NOT regulatory boards.
And yet, we’re talking about a candidate who could achieve very very little legislatively, and instead relied almost exclusively on executive/agency action.
“Is he though? Because I don’t recall any specific example of him making anyone more free than they already were.”
Well he did sign this into law: https://famm.org/our-work/first-step-act/
But I know there are plenty on the Right who disagreed with him on this and plenty on the Left who pretend that this didn’t happen.