Ralph Nader's going to run again, but this time as an independent. Juan Non-Volokh opines that: "Whatever the effect of Nader's campaign on the 2004 election, if it invigorates efforts to improve ballot access for third parties, it will be a plus for the nation." Instapundit applauds Juan for having made the "best observation" on the Nader announcement. Why? Juan's claim is hardly self-evident, but neither Juan nor Glenn provide any justification for it.
In the United States, the Electoral College makes it almost impossible for a third party candidiate to win the Presidency. Countries in which that is not true are not demonstrably better off. Look at the last Presidential election in France: In the first round of voting, Chirac led - but got less than 20% of the vote. Worse yet, nationalist nut-job and perrenial fringe party candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified for the run-off with a mere 17%. Do Juan and Glenn think this is a model we should emulate? Anyway, I doubt very much whether most Americans are dying for third party candidates to have ballot access. As Bruce Bartlett observed: "The recent California election is evidence that there is no real demand for third parties. Despite the fact that anyone with $3500 could be on the ballot for governor and with 135 people running, 95.5 percent of the final vote went to candidates openly identifying themselves as either Republicans or Democrats."
Update: James Joyner elaborates:
A winner-take-all system such as ours produces two moderate “catch-all” parties. Political scientists call this phenomenon "Duverger’s Law." Third parties, by their very definition, are those who can’t attract much popular support. ... The value of third party candidates aside, I also reject the premise that it’s particularly difficult for serious ones to get on the ballot. Ross Perot did it twice, Ralph Nader has done it several times, and all manner of fringe parties manage to do it every year.Poliblog has links to info about Duverger’s Law.
