Non-Voting Rights

Today is Election Day. The ultimate outcome of the various elections is still uncertain—though it is safe to guess that American citizens will continue to exhibit their patriotic lack of concern with electoral politics by staying home in ever-growing numbers.

An even stronger certainty is that all the winners of national and statewide races will be members of the two major parties—surely you've heard of them—the Republicans and the Democrats. Third parties' quixotic quest for public acclaim is stymied by crazily restrictive ballot access and campaign finance laws that make it almost prohibitively expensive and complicated for them to even suit up and get on the playing field with the big boys.

Then the standard news media propagate a vicious circle. They don't discuss minor party candidates, so most voters don't know about them. Since voters don't have any demonstrated interest in candidates they don't know about, the media have an excuse not to discuss them. Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts Michael Cloud tried a dramatic tactic to break this circle: a hunger strike. (This got him less attention than the LP's California gubernatorial candidate—since renounced by the party—Gary Copeland garnered for spitting on a talk show host.)

It seems likely that at the very least some third party candidates will succeed in being what two-party partisans like to condemn as "spoilers"—getting enough votes to exceed the difference in votes between the two major-party candidates. This looks possible in Senate races in Colorado, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.

Of course, one isn't "spoiling" a democratic system by giving voters a choice that they are actually bold enough to take. It wouldn't be surprising in a world where the absurd Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, with all its clearly unconstitutional restrictions on political speech, could become law, to see a movement among responsible good-government types to make us all live up to our civic responsibilities by voting for a "viable" candidate. But for now, as Americans we can celebrate one of our most glorious freedoms: the right to vote for any candidate on the ballot—or to just relax and indulge in completely justifiable complaints about the results of a game whose rules and choices we don't agree with in the first place.