Two-party system prevents true democracy

Can you name the last United States president who didn't belong to one of the two major parties? Millard Fillmore of the Whig Party served as the president from 1850 to 1853. The last elected president who belonged to a third party was Fillmore's predecessor, Zachary Taylor, a fellow Whig, who began serving office in 1848. He died less than two years later. In other words, the last time Americans voted a third party candidate into the presidential office was more than 150 years ago. What does this say about our supposed democracy? We claim to allow the free flow of ideas in our society, and to a certain extent (in the freedom of press, protest and lifestyle) we do, but the simple fact remains: our political system prevents a truly democratic system from evolving. What about Congress? There are currently 435 members of the House of Representatives. Two of them (less than 0.5 percent) are independent. There are also 100 members of the Senate, with only. one being independent. Beyond the statistics lies another story. During the debacle that was the 2000 presidential election, Ralph Nader, the candidate from the Green Party, managed to acquire 2.74 percent of the overall popular vote. Many Gore supporters accused the Green Party voters of "throwing their votes away," and their accusations hold weight. If the Green Party voters had gone Democratic instead (we can probably assume they wouldn't vote Republican with their liberal views), would Gore have won the Presidency? The answer is: probably yes. Of course, if we lived in an actual democracy instead of a democratic republic, Gore would have won the election anyway. Instead of each vote counting the same, the votes in New York and California actually count more than the votes from Oregon. How is that a democracy? We further choke the voice of the independents because of the slight issue of campaign money. Without being able to acquire at least 5 percent of the overall vote, presidential hopefuls aren't allowed to draw federal campaign funds for the next election. It costs millions upon millions of dollars to make an impact in a presidential election. After 150 years of watching Independents throw their money away, why should third party candidates even bother? Unless you're a billionaire (Ross Perot, anyone?), you aren't going to have much of a chance competing against mainstay presidential hopefuls with their money being funneled directly from their representative parties. So does this mean we shouldn't vote for whomever we truly want to be president? Should we simply accept that Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, Harry Browne and the rest of the independents have virtually no chance of winning the election? If we do accept this, does that mean we're simply throwing our votes away? Yet this is a dangerous way of thinking. By accepting that we must vote for one of two "necessary evils," we crush the independent parties entirely. Furthermore, we have the never-ending struggle between Democrats and Republicans. Politicians have become more concerned with being right than doing right. If a Democrat comes up with a great idea, do you think whether the Republicans are going to vote for it or veto is out of principality? And if a Republican does the same, what do you think the Democrats will do? Essentially, the two-party system prevents broad changes because we are limited to two ways of thinking: Democrat and Republican. There are, of course, conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, but how often do these people ascend to power? They cannot, because they go against the grain of their political parties. Even worse, it seems that we are gravitating toward a single party. Both the Democrats and the Republicans continue to take little pieces of each other's policies, becoming more and more like each other. They all advocate the same things: education, economy, security, military and anti-terrorism, just to name a few. Backers of the two-party system will claim that it prevents extreme viewpoints from ruining the stability of our government. One must only look at other stable countries, such as Germany, where there is a far more representative group of political parties across a broad range of ideals. So where does that leave us? What can we really do about it? In an ideal world, we could simply abolish political parties and make people run on their own personal politics. People would be forced to vote for the best politician, not the best political party. However, not only is this impossible, but no sooner would it be done than underground political parties would be cropping up and weighing the playing field once again. So are we stuck with this political system forever? If the past 150 years have been any indication, then I'd have to say yes. Yet we have a responsibility to our country and to our supposed democracy to push forward with the best system possible. That means voting, and not only voting, but voting for independents. We must find the politicians who best serve our needs, instead of the politicians who we find most convenient. With the advent of the Internet and the "Information Age," finding out about presidential candidates has never been easier. You can go take a look at http://www.politics1.com/parties.htm, which provides a summary of the good (Libertarian, Green), the bad (Nazi, Prohibition) and the absurd (Pot, Pansexual Peace) political parties. Perhaps, in another 150 years, we'll elect another independent president. Let's just hope it's not another Whig.

Sources: http://www.csamerican.com/Stuff.asp?k=1 http://www.house.gov/fattah/features/faq.htm http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2000/prespop.htm http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party_system http://quest.cjonline.com/stories/101800/gen_1018006338.shtml