(MintPress) – It might be one of the few things Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and business mogul Donald Trump have in common: Having once toiled with the idea of running as an Independent in the 2012 presidential election. Paul, with his outlier views, has been the one current Republican candidate that media pundits speculate could build an Independent campaign. Trump has said any presidential bid of his would be an Independent run to limit President Barack Obama to one term.
Whether those campaigns would be able to generate enough support to register on the political radar is up for debate. There does, however, seem to be a segment of the population that would encourage another mainstream candidate to run a third party. A Gallup poll from last year showed that 52 percent of United States voters believed a third political party was needed and that the Republican and Democrat parties were not doing an adequate job.
Since the Reconstruction Era of the U.S. in the mid-to-late 1800s, third party success has been rare. There have been a total of 31 U.S. Senators, 111 representatives, and 22 governors that weren’t affiliated with a major party to serve in the U.S. Currently, there are two U.S. Senators who were elected as neither Democrat nor Republican (Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders). New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has remained in office since 2002 as an independent, third party candidate.
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Barriers to success
Past results have proven tough enough for third party candidates to rise to the top of the ballot, but making it on the ballot is a challenge all on its own for a non-Republican or non-Democrat. Candidates are expected to pay for registration fees which are oftentimes too high. Independently wealthy candidates, such as Ross Perot, have been rare exceptions to that situation. The most recent third party candidate to appear on the ballot in all 50 states was Patrick Buchanan in 2000.
Ballot signatures also are an obstacle for third party candidates in a country that is used to voting on a Democrat-Republican platform. Currently, 10,000 signatures from residents are required to appear on a state’s primary election ballot.
G. William Domhoff, professor at University of California at Santa Cruz, wrote in 2005 that, “When it comes to electoral systems, the United States is the most extreme of the countries with a single-member district plurality system, meaning that its third parties have been very small and ephemeral. They rarely win more than a percent or two of the vote, and rarely last more than one or two elections when they do receive more than a few percent.”
The current debate platform, organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), excludes third party candidate unless they are able to meet challenging requirements, hurting their chances at garnering face time. The CPD, since 2000, requires candidates to reach 15 percent on at least five national polls to qualify for its presidential debates. This is all but unachievable for candidates that win a very small percentage of the vote, according to Domhoff.
Low polling numbers also hurt third party candidates’ chances at obtaining convention grants from the Federal Election Commission. According to the FEC, “Since no third party candidate received 5% of the vote in 2008, only the Republican and Democratic parties are eligible for 2012 convention grants, and only their nominees may receive grants for the general election when they are nominated. Third party candidates could qualify for retroactive public funds if they receive 5% or more of the vote in the general election.”
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Democratic deficit
Critics have hailed the current presidential election process to be a contribution to a democratic deficit within the U.S. They argue that the requirement of having enough money just to appear on the ballot hurts the fundamental principle of democracy. In 2009, Noam Chomsky, professor, historian and activist, said the current state of the country is due in large part to people feeling like they no longer have a voice in regards to the country’s operations.
“That feeling of helplessness, impotence, everything is run by somebody else, I can’t do anything about it—that reflects a democratic deficit,” Chomsky said. “These are enormous problems with the way the democratic system functions. There’s something similar in most places, but the United States is pretty extreme in this regard, among the industrial democracies.”
Chomsky said the system suffers when institutions are able to essentially purchase a leader to be voted upon, and that the influence of money plays an adverse role in the election process.
“ … candidates are vetted by corporate interests. The way it’s done is, that unless you have huge corporate financing and support, you just can’t run,” Chomsky said. “ [Barack] Obama won over [John] McCain, primarily because the financial institutions liked him better.”
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Copenhagen Criteria
Within the European Union (EU), countries must meet specific qualifications to join the confederation, called the Copenhagen Criteria. One specific dictation is that a country must have the wherewithal to preserve democratic governance.
According to the Copenhagen European Council, “Membership requires that candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union. Membership presupposes the candidate’s ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.”
On a hypothetical level, would the U.S. be able to be admitted into the EU on its current implementation of democracy? A lecture at Hilla University for Humanistic Studies at Stanford University laid out the four main principles of a democracy: A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections; The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; Protection of the human rights of all citizens; A rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.
“American democracy is what we call a ‘guided democracy’ in countries that we don’t like, like Iran. So in Iran, elections are, putting aside questions of the credibility of elections, elections are — the candidates are vetted by the clerical leadership. Guardian council decides who can run,” Chomsky said. “We’re pretty much the same.”