Andy Craig: Multi-Party Politics – An American Inevitability

From Libertarian U.S. House candidate Andy Craig at his campaign website:

The 2015 elections in Israel have produced a national legislature, the Knesset, with members from ten political parties. The upcoming 2015 elections in the United Kingdom will feature televised debates with the participation of seven parties. The Canadian Parliament currently includes six parties. The Parliament of Australia features Representatives and Senators from no fewer than twelve parties.

The 114th United States Congress, representing a larger population than those other examples combined, is almost unique among developed liberal democracies in having Representatives from just two political parties. This isn’t inevitable, it isn’t healthy, and it isn’t a permanent feature of American politics. The cracks in the two-party stranglehold are already showing, and self-serving collusion by Republicans and Democrats to stave off this inevitability, will only make the breakthrough of the American multiparty reality that much harsher on them when it happens.

Americans don’t naturally fall into just two political camps. The ideological landscape is no less diverse in the United States than it is other nations. There’s no particular reason why social conservatives and free-market advocates and foreign policy hawks should all be in the same party, nor labor unions and anti-war activists and neoliberal centrists lumped together into the other party. Americans have come to think of this as the natural left-right spectrum, but there is no logic behind it other than cobbling together enough disparate groups to reach 50%.

In this environment combinations of views- like the fiscally restrained, socially tolerant, anti-war platform offered by the Libertarian Party- are excluded because they don’t fit one of the arbitrary, compelled coalitions that control each of the major parties. Not because such views aren’t popular- polling consistently shows that they are- but because such a platform doesn’t check the right boxes to make it through either major-party primary.

So why do Americans- in an era where neither party can muster approval ratings higher than the 30s, and stated desire for a third party ranges as high as 60%- continue to be stuck with a system that, within a rounding error, gives no representation and no voice to anybody outside of the Republican and Democratic parties?

One common answer is the electoral system used in the United States. There are indeed several reasons why a plurality-wins single-member-district system, like we use to elect members of Congress and state legislatures, tends to favor the development of two evenly-matched dominant parties.

But the United Kingdom uses the same system to elect members of Parliament, as does Canada. Those nations traditionally have a “weak” two-party system, in that two larger parties were dominant. But they don’t produce a total lock-out of other parties, and have strong third parties and regional parties that play a significant role in the national debate. These parties do elect members of the national legislature, unlike the United States. Sometimes those third parties even grow to surpass and replace one of the two major parties, something the United States has not seen since the 1850s when the Republicans replaced the Whigs.

There are already Americans voting for third-party and independent candidates in substantial numbers, and they’re not being represented. In 2014, the Libertarian Party received more votes at the mid-term election than any other third-party in the past 100 years. Republicans and Democrats, faced with losing their safe assumption that their only competition is each other, now get together to pass blatantly discriminatory and unconstitutional laws to keep other parties off the ballot altogether. It’s a tactic so effective, that Vladimir Putin’s ruling party has even cited American state ballot access laws to defend their own corruption of the electoral process in Russia. It’s also something that politicians in most other relatively free and democratic nations couldn’t even attempt.

Democrats and Republicans further collude, in agreements to sponsor exclusive debates that only their candidates will participate in, with the stipulation that the candidates will participate in no other debates. Faced with the prospect of losing votes to reasonable, legitimate alternatives, the response of the two major parties in the United States is to refuse to even acknowledge the existence of other candidates. Not allowed on the ballot, not allowed in the debates- it is this organized policy of exclusion that keeps millions of Americans from having their views represented in Congress.

If 1/435th of the total votes cast in 2014 resulted in one Representative, there would be nine members of House from outside the Republican and Democratic parties. Five of them would be Libertarians, the rest Greens or independents. That might not seem like much out of 435 Representatives, but the difference between some representation and zero representation is a very big difference. Elected members of Congress bring credibility to a party, a recognized voice in the national debate, and the ability to vote on and introduce and propose amendments to legislation. The position of third parties and independents in a legislature can even be stronger than their numbers, when they are the deciding factor in a closely-divided vote. None of that occurs, if the millions of Americans who don’t vote for either the Republicans or the Democrats continue to have no representation at all.

The first step in changing this, is electing a third-party member of Congress. In a city like Milwaukee, the unrepresentative failure of the two-party system presents an opportunity to those of us who want change. In a starkly polarized state, Milwaukee’s 4th congressional district has been regarded as such a Democratic safe seat, that the Republicans have only put up a token paper candidate in opposition.

Milwaukee’s residents have very good reasons for not voting Republican- but that doesn’t mean they’re satisfied with the results of unaccountable Democratic monopoly. On issues ranging from school choice to over-incarceration to criminal justice reform and civil liberties, Milwaukee’s Democrats have failed to address the topics of importance to Milwaukee, because they have been safely assured of facing no challenge from any Republican on those issues. Instead we get year after year of broken promises, partisan grandstanding, and more of the same policies that have brought Milwaukee to its current state.

That’s why I’ve tossed my hat into the ring for the 2016 election for US House of Representatives. I see the intersection of the problems afflicting my proudly adopted home city, and the national trends that are presaging something new and different from what Republicans or Democrats can offer. I think a moderate, pragmatic, principled Libertarian in Congress is something that would benefit both Milwaukee and the nation, and as we get closer to campaign season 2016, I look forward to making the case for why Milwaukee can and should lead that new way forward.

Andy Craig
Libertarian candidate for Congress (WI-4)
Chair, Libertarian Party of Milwaukee County