2024 Third Party and Independent Candidate General discussion

[PSOL]

I have a feeling that either the Howie Hawkins wins the P&F nomination or it becomes far more competitive. I found it suspicious that the PSL didn’t try to get on the ballot for Arkansas I believe when the petition restrictions were introduced, as usually while they do operate on a shoe-string budget outside California, they do try to get on the ballot everywhere they could in the 2020 cycle.

I’m basing this off zero evidence but a single state’s ballot access window, but I just feel it for some reason.

[PSOL]

New BAN edition.

Outside of the news on the failure of the Green petition drive, Richard Winger rightfully chews Yang’s joke of a book

But then Forward falters. He asserts that the solution to the nation’s unhappy political life is to pass ballot initiatives that combine top-four or top-five systems with ranked choice voting. He asserts dogmatically and repeatedly that voters who vote in partisan primaries are the extremists in the U.S., and non-primary voters are sensible moderates. Political science research overwhelmingly rebuts this idea. Here is a list of political science papers, and book chapters, that say he is wrong:
Has the Top-Two Primary Elected More Moderates? Eric McGhee & Boris Shor, in Perspectives on Politics, Dec. 2017, Vol. 15(4).
Why Closed Primaries Do Not Contribute to Polarization. Barbara Norrander & Jay Wendland, presented to the American Political Science Association meeting, September 2015.
Do Moderate Voters Weigh Candidates’ Ideologies? Boris Shor, Political Behavior 39(1).
Partisan Polarization in the U.S.: Diagnoses and Avenues for Reform. Nolan McCarty & Boris Shor, SSRN 2714013. They recommend stronger political parties.
Solutions to Political Polarization in America (book with chapters by 22 authors, published 2015). Only one of the authors writes that top-two primaries reduce polarization. Another author recommends an end to government-administered primaries. Lead author Nathaniel Persily.
California Still the Most Polarized Legislature, in the blog "Measuring American Legislatures", Nov. 8, 2016, by Boris Shor & Nolan McCarty.
American Gridlock: the Sources, Character, and Impact of Political Polarization (2015 book, lead authors Antoine Yoshinaka & James A. Thurber)
Chuck Schumer is Wrong About the Top-Two Primary, at blog 538.com, July 22, 2014, by Harry Enten.
The Limits of Electoral Reform, book by Todd Donovan and Shaun Bowler.
Democracy in the States: Experiments in Electoral Reform (2008 book by Bruce Cain, Todd Donovan, and C. Tolbert.
The Top-Two Primary: What Can California Learn from Washington? California Journal of Public Policy 4(1) by Todd Donovan.
Yang cites no authority for his belief that voters in partisan primaries are extremists, except he says that Katherine Gehl believes this. But Gehl, who is a wealthy businesswoman in Wisconsin who is promoting top-five primaries, is not a political scientist, nor does she have practical experience in elections.
Yang doesn’t mention the point that there are approximately 150 reasonably democratic countries in the world, and none of them other than the U.S. uses a "top-anything" system.
In the world outside the U.S., it is unheard of to print ballots with party labels, and yet deprive parties of the ability to nominate candidates.
Yang doesn’t explain the purpose of the primary. Because he is advocating ranked choice voting, and an end to party nominees, there seems to be no reason whatsoever to even have a primary. And Louisiana has abolished primaries (except for presidential primaries). Louisiana merely holds general elections. In one-fifth of its elections, no one gets 50% and then there is a run-off. The book does not mention the Louisiana system.
Yang also doesn’t explain why he doesn’t support other election reforms. His book does not mention proportional representation, even though the vast majority of the best-governed nations in the world (as measured by objective criteria) use proportional representation. There is a bill pending in the U.S. House for proportional representation, HR 3863, by Congressman Donald Beyer (D-Virginia). Although it only has six co-sponsors, at least it exists; by contrast there is no bill in Congress for a top-five primary.
Yang doesn’t mention the National Popular Vote Plan movement, which is making headway. An initiative is circulating in Michigan to have that state join the Plan.
A top-five system would probably result in a Democratic-Republican monopoly on the ballot for U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races. The top-two system in California and Washington provides data to support this prediction. During the 13 years top-two has been in effect in Washington, and the 10 years it has been in effect in California, there is not a single minor party candidate for Governor or Senator who ever polled in the top five in the primary.
The best any third party candidate for those two offices has done in either state is sixth.
See the May 1, 2021 print issue of Ballot Access News for a list of all the minor party candidates for those two offices during the top-two period.
The reason minor party candidates for those two offices do so poorly in top-two primaries is that all the public attention is focused on which major party figures will qualify. The press doesn’t cover minor party candidates in top-two primaries.
Plans for the Forward Party
The book contains almost no practical information for people who want to support Yang’s proposed Forward Party. It doesn’t mention ballot access problems, nor problems for minor parties being included in candidate debates. Yang outlines the six main planks for the Forward Party: (1) ranked choice voting and open primaries; (2) fact-based governance; (3) human-centered capitalism; (4) effective and modern government; (5) universal basic income; (6) grace and tolerance. But he says nothing about what the party’s strategy would be, except that it would use the initiative process in states that have it to pass ranked choice voting combined with top-five primaries.
Shortly after the book was published, it was announced that a group of very wealthy individuals are banding together to raise $100,000,000 to promote state initiatives to implement top-five primaries and ranked choice voting. Probably Yang’s real purpose in writing his book is to help that movement.

https://mobile.twitter.com/SPofUSA/status/1455943475829133322
Winning two races, one as an official for taxes in a major city as an avowed socialist, and having a meh result in New Jersey makes the pattern clear. Like several other socialist parties, SPUSA has woken up and is making a comeback
Nick Brana has been elected as the PP’s interim chair
ASP has a new executive director
Brock Pierce might run for US senate in Vermont
I’m surprised why his child pornography allegations are taking so long to come to light again.
The Freedom Socialist Party has endorsed a “No” vote on the recall of Kshama Sawant, sensing the urgency of the situation
Let’s take a moment and reflect on the fact that the New Alliance Party, a nominally Marxist Leninist outfit often called a cult, joined forces with the billionaire-led Reform Party as their “Left Wing” and then aided the election of Michael Bloomberg to keep their jobs in turning working class teens into effective cogs in the machine. The NAP/IWP is perhaps the only self-proclaimed socialist outfit to fuse themselves into the capitalist superstructure in recent US history. Not even the DSA has done the crazy s••• they did, and they likely never will be in that position of power to sell out that much.

Stateboiler, you were a member of the Reform Party before it broke apart, what was their deal?

[StateBoiler]

Stateboiler, you were a member of the Reform Party before it broke apart, what was their deal?

Was never a member. I said if they were still a real thing when I became voting age instead of destroyed by self-serving entryists, I probably would have been a member.

[PSOL]

So I have several semi-accurate templates of the US Marxist-Leninist left

[PSOL]

Any sense out there on how the Sawant recall will go, for or against?

A successful recall in a way could be a pyrrhic defeat for her. She can say the centrist Democrats ganged up with Republicans to oust her.

It will possibly pass, the reality is that SAlt is flat broke from the pandemic raising fixed costs, and can’t compete with the millions pouring in from anti-Sawant superPACs. If held on Nov 2nd, she would get enough turnout to win, but not now. They’ve also had drainage of revenue from splits in England, given that an insignificant amount of the upper brass are British immigrants who are interconnected with the founding party area and SAlt in 2019 organized a donation campaign to keep the ISA afloat. there is a shining light; what is going for them is the fact that outside the very close mayoral race in her district, the more rhetorically radical NTK won in district 3 by a good margin.

Taking the confusing and unverified result in Minnesota as a nonfactor, SAlt will be in the worst shape it has ever been since being purged from the Labor Party. Their internationale, the ISA, is in shambles and have gone through eight splits since 2015, four of them in the past three years. They are clearly going to fall apart if they don’t have some victory to relish in. Outside of Russia, every derivative of the original internationale, the Committee for Workers International, have been in a state of terminal decline. SAlt’s presence in Seattle was the one shining thing they could keep telling themselves that their work was worth it.

If SAlt wins, it will be due to their impeccable grassroots machine forging close connections with major immigrant communities, trade unions, and other likeminded political organizations. If SAlt loses; it will be a damning statement against entryism, Trotskyite organizational model of (international) movements and parties, and SAlt and its allies inaction in not setting up party services in providing for the Seattle poor in the form of direct necessities and amenities. SAlt has more than a thousand members. I expect that if they do collapse that most will either tune out of politics while the rest are apart of splinters, other entryists in the DSA, and with a small fraction joining the Green Party directly. Winning would make the grand coalition the winner all things respected in Seattle. Losing would be a major blow, but not an unexpected or fatal one to the workers movement. The fact that a socialist is in charge of taxes in Minneapolis is a cause for celebration.

[Continential]

The first image in PSOL's templates works if you right click and click Open image in new tab.

[StateBoiler]

Call back to the 2016 race, but the FEC are forcing Jill Stein to pay back to the federal government more than $175k. The issue comes down to primary season matching funds of $591k received by Stein and the FEC says Stein was not entitled to a match of funds from private donors post-Green Party National Convention but Stein argues the cutoff date should have been the Peace & Freedom Party Convention because she was seeking its nomination. The FEC says the Peace & Freedom Party are not registered as a national party and therefore according to law the date of the PFP Convention does not matter and the two major party conventions were earlier than their convention date. She's appealed, but I expect the FEC ruling to hold.].

[Continential]

What are the requirements for a party to be a "national" one?

[StateBoiler]

What are the requirements for a party to be a "national" one?

...exist in more than 1 state? some kind of FEC registration?

Winger says in his article the law here the FEC are relying on for their ruling is quite complicated.

[PSOL]

So apparently SPUSA got two candidates elected in Minneapolis, for Tax Board and Education for position 4. Sewer Socialism is back!
https://mobile.twitter.com/brockpierce/status/1466164144323764224
https://mobile.twitter.com/PeoplesParty_US/status/1467748116803862528

[StateBoiler]

The Forward Party's first candidate will be running in Jumanee Williams' Congress seat.

https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2021/12/first-forward-party-candidate-launches-bid-for-ny-congressional-seat/

[StateBoiler]

One ballot line from 2020 gone for 2024.

The Bread and Roses Party has asked the Maryland State Board of Elections to remove it from the list of qualified parties. The party’s founder, Jerome Segal, re-registered as a Democrat and will run for Governor of Maryland in 2022.

[ElectionsGuy]

As of now in the Libertarian Party, I see the three most likely nominees for the presidential ticket in no particular order

Justin Amash - Former Rep. (R->L) and candidate for president in 2020 - Pragmatist "establishment" backed candidate.
Spike Cohen - 2020 VP nominee - Somewhere in the middle of these two.
Dave Smith - Comedian and podcaster - Mises-backed candidate who wants to bring party closer to Ron Paul movement/era.

As the civil war continues in the Libertarian Party, we'll see which of these picks up steam after the May 2022 convention. In the libertarian world, there is an even larger rift than I expected not necessarily in terms of policy, but what priorities should be campaigned on, and what "outrages" people most, and often this splits along left/right lines even as many libertarians don't think of themselves as left or right. It's basically pro-Mises Caucus vs anti-Mises Caucus. Amash would likely appeal to those who think Trump and "Trumpism" are the biggest threats to liberty right now, despite being a former Republican, and get the backing of the LP establishment and publications that align with them such as Reason and Cato. Cohen is more ideologically libertarian than Amash, but also having been associated with the Jorgensen campaign, isn't quite as critical of the party and its leadership as Smith is. While Smith would likely appeal to those who think Democrats and their authoritarian covid measures, as well as fiscal/monetary policy, are the biggest threat. Smith was also critical of Jorgensen's campaign in 2020 for not being vocal enough against lockdowns and pandering to BLM and wokeness in the face of "violent riots".

Maybe one or two of these people don't run, but those seem like the natural successors to the party

[StateBoiler]

Cohen is not a Mises Caucus guy, I think he's in the Radical Caucus, but is someone I could see the Mises Caucus backing if they have no one better or their guy is eliminated (kind of how he got the VP nod over the Jorgensen-endorsed John Monds). He has some future politically, although I'm not sure it's running for President in 2024.

I honestly don't think you can make any judgment on anything until after the 2022 Reno National Convention to see what the delegate base thinks. That is going to be a more hardcore audience than the 2024 Convention since the 2024 Convention picks the presidential ticket, so if the Mises Caucus can't grab party leadership and Harlos is ousted as National Secretary in her attempt to run again, then it probably gives strength to the more pragmatic side.

I could plausibly see a Harlos presidential run in the event she does not get the National Secretary gig, although I think it'd be about as successful as Arvin Vohra's.

The one thing working against Amash is prior to Jorgensen, we had 3 former elected Republican nominees in a row (Barr '08, Johnson '12 & '16), and it's one reason a lot of people did not care for Bill Weld at all and Amash ran into some headwinds when he entered the 2020 race briefly (although I think how it turned out is it all went back on Jacob Hornberger and helped Jorgensen win the nomination).

[Klobmentum Mutilated Herself]

As a non-libertarian, I've always liked Amash more than Ron Paul, and I'd consider voting for him if the Greens can't get ballot access in my state. I disagree with his economics as much as I would with any libertarian, but I appreciate that he actually supports rights for minorities instead of the Paulite platform plank of "I actually hate minorities, but the feds shouldn't stop a state from giving them rights." But I suppose rank-and-file libertarian don't want someone who appeals to socialists.

[PSOL]

Green Party Petition for recognition in Yavapai, AZ fails

[PSOL]

https://mobile.twitter.com/PSLAtlanta/status/1473047702925717506

No wonder federal assets attacked this chapter. I wonder if they also distribute any of their new swag
The GP Texas candidate

[StateBoiler]

Alliance Party's 2021 Year in Review: https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2022/01/alliance-party-2021-a-year-in-review/

Highlights:

-change in leadership
-creation of new affiliates in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi, affiliated with established state parties such as American Delta Party of Delaware (Rocky De La Fuente shell vehicle) and Reform Party of Florida (real party by 3rd party standards)
-they've shifted from centrist to left:

In April we revealed this new brand with a new logo which has proven to be successful in reaching and attracting our targets as we moved into different social media platforms. Although our unique approach makes it hard for us to be labeled, thankfully, this new look took us out of what most might call the ‘centrist’ position on the political spectrum with a move to what others might call the “left”. Countless studies demonstrated the future voter is making a parallel move.

This allowed us to rightly proclaim ourselves as the “Party of the Future” leaving the Republican Party and its minor party allies to target the “right” and the Democrats to target the “Center”. There is no other party which seeks to elect a different kind of politician; one that term limits themselves and works for the people and not corporations or special interests while leading with an agenda that is both progressive, rational and rooted in common sense for all people. With this we can empower the people to control their own destiny asking everyone to forsake the ways of the past, but instead to “Own Your Future”.

That's right, the American Independent Party of California co-nominated this "left" party's presidential candidate.

[PSOL]

Maine SOS being very petty about ballot access for the Green party

GPTX are attempting to have candidates for governor, railroad commissioner, and land commissioner for 2022

[StateBoiler]

Maine SOS being very petty about ballot access for the Green party

Name is Shenna Bellows, a Democrat and former Executive Director of the ACLU in the state.

Feel like elected government executives that make such obvious ulterior motive decisions should get the ambush press treatment. Take the Democratic Party's voting rights push and turn it on this Secretary of State to the extreme of she's no better than the Republicans her party decries. It's blatant hypocrisy that costs Maine taxpayers money pointlessly because now the state has to pay to defend itself against the same issue they just lost in a federal court if the Greens choose to file a complaint.

[PSOL]

Peoples Party now has ballot access in the swing state of Virginia

[PSOL]

Running in district 51, Jose Cortez has the endorsement of P&F, PSL, Greens

[StateBoiler]

The vice presidential candidate for the Constitution Party in 2020, William Mohr, died this past week.

[StateBoiler]

Video of Andrew Yang interviewing Marianne Williamson. Per IPR, they discussed the Forward Party, Democratic National Committee, and third parties. The summary said Yang tried to talk her into running for the Forward nomination in 2024 but Williamson was noncommittal.

https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2022/01/watch-marianne-williamson-joins-andrew-yang-to-talk-2024-election-the-dnc-and-third-parties/

[Agonized-Statism]

Video of Andrew Yang interviewing Marianne Williamson. Per IPR, they discussed the Forward Party, Democratic National Committee, and third parties. The summary said Yang tried to talk her into running for the Forward nomination in 2024 but Williamson was noncommittal.

The Forward Party is shaping up to be another Reform. Efforts to draft other candidates will fail, Yang will jump in himself in 2024 and fail to make an impact, then maybe some Republican or Democrat will use it as a vehicle to spite a successful primary challenger preceding its collapse. It's just the Yang party.