>Sadly, I doubt this will ever happen. These agencies are huge and there's just too much inertia to change them.
This is the power of a 3rd party winning the presidency. All of this force falls under the executive branch whose policy can be changed in an instant.
Don't think of it as impossible, 20 years ago Ross Perot received around 20% of the vote. All it takes is someone 3 times more "popular" than Ross Perot.
It's possible, but extremely unlikely due to the game theory of Plurality Voting or IRV (in countries/regions which have switched to that) both of which are bad, yet overwhelmingly used for single-winner elections (like, for selecting a president, or in some countries for selecting a single representative per voting district).
There's a political science term called a realigning election, but it involves a radical change to a party, or the displacement of at least one of the two dominant parties with a new party, after which elections go back to a two-party-dominated playing field for a while; a persistent 3-or-more party system is not viable without changing voting systems.
> Don't think of it as impossible, 20 years ago Ross Perot received around 20% of the vote. All it takes is someone 3 times more "popular" than Ross Perot.
Right after that, the two factions of the big-business party collaborated to ensure that no other party could mount a serious challenge. This involved forming the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) in 1987, which re-wrote the debate rules to effectively block challengers from participating. Out of sight, out of mind.
"Right after that, the two factions of the big-business party collaborated to ensure that no other party could mount a serious challenge. This involved forming the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) in 1987, which re-wrote the debate rules to effectively block challengers from participating. Out of sight, out of mind."
Incredible. After Ross Perot ran for president in 1992, they traveled back in time to form CPD in 1987. Amazing story.
I confused the CPD taking over from the League of Women Voters in '87 and greatly dumbing down the format with the CPD raising standards for party inclusion in the debates in 2000.
The power of TV is at its lowest point in recent history. Any candidate could have a fulltime youtube channel where they are gathering supporters everyday.
Gary Johnson posted tons of videos to his YouTube channel, had online debates with Jill Stein and other third party candidates when they were all shut out of the CPD debates, did several Reddit AMAs, spliced his own responses into CPD debate footage and posted them on his YouTube channel, and generally had a very active online presence.
The sad fact is that even though the power of TV is diminishing, it's still by far where the majority of voters get their information from and if you don't get on the televised debate you don't stand a chance. Unfortunately democracy at this level means you are ruled by the low-information voter.
Interestingly enough, the number of non voters in 2012 was higher than the number of votes for either Obama or Romney.
So if all the people that didn't vote (many because they feel that their vote doesn't change things anyway) voted for a third party candidate, that candidate would win without having to take a single vote from either of the two main party candidates.
Third parties don't win, but they do affect outcomes. If Perot hadn't gotten back in in 1992, Bush would probably have been re-elected. No Clinton presidency, no impeachment, no Hillary. Would be quite a different political landscape by now.
That candidate would win the popular vote, but that doesn't mean they'd win the electoral vote. All people who's votes counted voted in the last election...
This is true, but rather undermines the original point about the POTUS doing it.
State governors and city mayors tend to be a lot more willing to do things like this, but you'd still have to get the political will. I'd expect you'd need someone to successfully get elected on a platform of doing it, and for the opposition to not find it reasonable to attack that item on the platform.
My memory is fuzzy but wasn't he winning for a while? I remember him kind of going kooky towards the end of the campaign and lost a lot of votes. Is that accurate?
This is the power of a 3rd party winning the presidency. All of this force falls under the executive branch whose policy can be changed in an instant.
Don't think of it as impossible, 20 years ago Ross Perot received around 20% of the vote. All it takes is someone 3 times more "popular" than Ross Perot.