In a comment to an earlier post on third parties, I mentioned how I still support voting third party to allow for Matching Funds in the next election. After writing this, I realized I know next to nothing about public funding of elections. So I went to the FEC site and read the law...so you don't have to. Here's the salient passage:
Minor party candidates and new party candidates may become eligible for partial public funding of their general election campaigns. (A minor party candidate is the nominee of a party whose candidate received between 5 and 25 percent of the total popular vote in the preceding Presidential election. A new party candidate is the nominee of a party that is neither a major party nor a minor party.) The amount of public funding to which a minor party candidate is entitled is based on the ratio of the party's popular vote in the preceding Presidential election to the average popular vote of the two major party candidates in that election. A new party candidate receives partial public funding after the election if he/she receives 5 percent or more of the vote. The entitlement is based on the ratio of the new party candidate's popular vote in the current election to the average popular vote of the two major party candidates in the election.
So the more votes a third party gets in an election, the more public funding they merit and, therefore, the greater their ability to get the message out in subsequent elections. Since the amount they get is a function of the ratio of their votes to the average to the two major parties, a Democratic vote in Texas actually weakens third parties. Being a centrist, I'd prefer to place my bets outside the two poles with someone like the Unity Party.
1 comment:
I've given up on third parties. I bought into Perot, but lost interest when he dropped out of the '92 election because, if memory serves, he was worried about press coverage at his daughter's birthday party. And that debate with his V.P. nominee, Stockton, had to be one of the most surreal moments in recent political history.
Here in the reddest of the red states, the Democrats might as well be a third party. Their state office is in a storefront next to a massage school. The NY times had a good article recently about why the Utahans like Bush so much, despite his incompetence. Here's a hint: it involves God.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/washington/04believers.html?ex=1150257600&en=b401f7138d446d81&ei=5070
Post a Comment