Tired of the Republican Party? Fed up with the Democrats? Dont despair. There are dozens of political parties out there begging for your attention, including many you probably never knew existed.

At a time of increasing dissatisfaction with the major parties, voters appear to be shopping for alternatives, both nationally and on the state level.

People join third parties for a variety of reasons. Some are dissatisfied with the parties in power. Others are looking for an organization that better represents their personal political philosophies. Some want to push a single issue.

Regardless of the reason, political parties primarily exist to get candidates elected who share ideological and policy goals. On that front, nontraditional parties continue to be crushed by red and blue behemoths.

The long-established Libertarian, Green and Constitution parties are well known. In fact, Libertarian Gary Johnson did better in 2016 than any third-party presidential candidate since Ross Perot under the Reform Party 20 years earlier. State-level minor party candidates have also made inroads in some states, though it hasnt necessarily resulted in election wins.

But there is also a host of more obscure or single-issue parties on the menu of American politics.

Take the Transhumanist Party. Trans what? Transhumanist.

The party, according to its website, supports significant life extension achieved through the progress of science and technology; a cultural, societal, and political atmosphere informed and animated by reason, science, and secular values; and efforts to use science, technology, and rational discourse to reduce and eliminate various existential risks to the human species.

Then theres the United States Pirate Party. It has nothing to do with Capt. Jack Sparrow or that faux holiday in September where people say argh or matey. It does, however, have something to do with piracy. The Pirate Party aims to reform intellectual property laws, foster true governmental transparency, and protect privacy and civil liberties.

No political party outside of the Democrats and Republicans can currently claim a member of Congress, though there are two independents in the U.S. Senate, both of whom caucus with the Democrats.

Talk of a third major political party heated up recently among some prominent conservatives who are disillusioned with the fractured GOP, including 2016 independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin, Should they form a new party, the odds of putting someone in office are decidedly against them.

A Gallup poll released in February found support for a third political party in the United States at a high point. The survey found 62% of adults say the parties do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed.

The poll was conducted before news reports that dozens of government officials in prior Republican administrations were discussing an anti-Donald Trump third political party, according to Gallup.

Some Republican voters in Utah are concerned about Trumps influence in the GOP, said Chris Karpowitz, co-director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University.

The U.S. Capitol insurrection and, to a lesser extent, the booing of Sen. Mitt Romney at the Utah GOP convention, have raised worries about where the party is headed and what it stands for, he said. The events of the Trump era has resulted in young Utahns being less attached to the Republican Party, he said.

Whether that decreased willingness to identify with the Republican Party benefits third parties is an open question, Karpowitz said.

Nontraditional parties might be more attractive to some who are not ready to become Democrats, but most voters care about electability, and thats where third parties struggle, he said.

Only one third-party candidate, William Carney, has won a U.S. House election since 1960. New Yorkers voted Carney in as a member of the Conservative Party of New York State in 1979. He switched to the Republican Party in 1985.

Another Conservative Party candidate in New York, James Buckley, served one term in the U.S. Senate before losing reelection as a Republican in 1977. Former Sen. Joe Lieberman won reelection in a party created by his supporters, Connecticut for Lieberman, after losing the 2006 Democratic nomination.

The success rate in the modern era has not been good on a national level for third-party candidates.

But what about on a state level?

The track record isnt good there either, with one notable exception.

A Deseret News review of 50 state legislatures showed only four current officeholders from outside the two major parties a Libertarian in Wyoming, a Libertarian in Maine who switched from the GOP after being elected, a Working Families Party member in New York and member of the Independence Party of New York. There are also a few independents here and there.

But the Vermont General Assembly has more members from a minor party than the rest of the statehouses combined.

The Vermont Progressive Party is perhaps the most effective nontraditional party in the country.

Seven members of the Vermont House of Representatives and two state senators are Progressives. The Vermont House formally recognizes the Progressive caucus alongside the Democrats and Republicans.

In addition, the party holds a plurality on the 12-member Burlington City Council, with six members. (Four Democrats and two independents maintain the other seats). Progressives also held the mayors office for nearly 30 years.

Weve been successful because we primarily focus on local and legislative races, said Josh Wronski, Vermont Progressive Party executive director.

Though it homes in on local races, the Progressive Party does claim a big name: Bernie Sanders. Hes listed as a Progressive endorsed independent on the partys website.

Work closely with him, Wronski said. He accepts our nomination and politely chooses to run as an independent.

The Vermont Progressive Party also does well partly because of a thing called fusion voting. The practice gives candidates the ability to run on multiple party tickets. The parties are listed separately on the ballot but votes for the candidate are pooled. Only eight states in the country allow electoral fusion or multi-party nominations.

Progressives in the Vermont legislature are officially listed as Progressive/Democrat. Another seven members are listed as Democrat/Progressive.

Wronski said fusion voting has been a good way for the party to reach voters who have the perception that there are only Democrats and Republicans.

It has been a really good way to break through that and say were willing to work with not necessarily the Democratic establishment leaders but with Democratic voters who havent been exposed to the kind of work were doing, he said. That has absolutely been effective.

In Utah, Jim Bennett, the son of the late Republican Sen. Bob Bennett, and BYU political science professor Richard Davis, a Democrat, grew weary of extreme views co-opting their parties. They and other disaffected Republicans and Democrats formed the United Utah Party in 2017 to carve out a middle ground in the state.

As of this month, the party had only 2,501 registered members, according to the Utah elections office. Registered Republicans number more than 909,000, and Democrats 270,000 but there are 556,000 unaffiliated voters in the state.

Weve got a niche here that weve established, said Davis, who served two terms as the centrist partys chairman. His involvement in the fledgling party spurred him to look deeper into third parties resulting in a book last year titled Beyond Donkeys and Elephants: Minor Political Parties in Contemporary American Politics.

A United Utah candidate has yet to win an election. Party candidates captured a slightly smaller percentage of the overall vote in the state in 2020 compared to 2018, as the COVID-19 pandemic hampered their campaign efforts.

While the percentage was smaller, the number of votes cast for United Utah hopefuls was up last year, including more than 173,000 for its candidate for state auditor.

We saw that as progress given the fact that were still not known, Davis said.

Davis said hed like to have fusion voting in Utah to help get more moderate candidates elected to office rather than those who appeal to the more extreme Republican and Democratic bases.

In states where its used, third parties typically do better, Davis said. Unfortunately, theres not much encouragement on the part of Republicans and Democrats to do that.

Davis wonders if former Utah Rep. Ben McAdams, a conservative Democrat, would have benefitted from nominations in the Democratic and United Utah parties. He also thinks GOP Sen. Mitt Romney could have a sort of hedge with a United Utah nomination if he were to lose a Republican primary.

Fusion voting has popped up in the Utah Legislature a couple of times in the past, but never went anywhere, said Justin Lee, state elections director.

While the United Utah Party often inserts itself in debates on the issues of the day, its voice, like most third parties, goes largely ignored.

Too often the media can overlook the efforts of parties like us, Wronksi said.

For example, in 2008 the Vermont Progressive Party candidate for governor finished second in a three-way race. But network news outlets listed him as other next to the Democrat and the Republican even though he bested one of the major party candidates.

Some minor parties have tried to find strength in numbers. At least nine independent parties scattered across the country merged to form the Alliance Party over the past three years. Davis said the United Utah Party declined to join because it didnt care for the new partys presidential nominee and it prefers to concentrate its efforts on state and local races.

A third partys existence can also be tenuous. Many states require political parties to win a certain percentage of the overall vote in an election to maintain status as a recognized party. The Moderate Party in Rhode Island failed to do so in 2019, leaving officials to notify about 4,000 registered party members that they were now unaffiliated.

And whether you call them third parties, nontraditional parties or minor parties, not everything has to be red or blue.

Giraffe Party, anyone?

Read the rest here:
Third parties in the U.S. What options do voters have? - Deseret News

Midway through my life, I wake to find myself in a techno-dystopia, with no sense of where my proper pathway has gone. I have a muse, but no mentor to guide me through all the circles of this labyrinth, this global metropolis I have managed to avoid until now. My domestication settles over me like a nylon shirt, like rolls of fat around my belly; like a cybernetic key for doors to places I dont want to go but have to if I want my family to eat and be sheltereda key that shuts away my mind from the world and keeps it locked in my brain.

I cant feel for knowledge anymore, not from my belly or through my feet from the living land. So instead, I try to make sense of things. But that doesnt work, so I turn it around and try to sense-make. But I dont know what that is, so I type it into the device that is my key to this world (war) of information and I make friends through that door.

Theyre stoics and I like their sense of humor. I havent read Marcus Aurelius, so I dont know if they are practicing kindness; I just think they are kind. Daniel has a brain like a planet and he says to me, First principles, Tyson. What is each thing within itself? What is its nature? What does it do, this civilization you despise?

Maybe Ive found my Virgil to guide me through this.

It kills people. It kills land.

No! That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing it does, what need does it serve by killing?

Matricidal rage. Fear of death. Tiny dicks

No, it covets. That is its nature. And how do we begin to covet, Tyson? Do we seek out things to covet? No. We begin by coveting what we see every day.

Lightbulb! I can see it, I can see it; they never felt superior at all, they never believed it for a second. They did not pity us or feel disgust, they was just jelly. Bah. If thats what your enlightenment gets you, then I dont want any of it.

But my new friends seem to have some bits and pieces from their Age of Reason that they want to keep, that might really be worth keeping. I think some of their algorithms are off, because of bad Paleolithic baseline data. I work to correct this in their games and on their commons, and find the skeleton of an Ark emerging. Did we make this one or dig it up on a mountain? I cant quite remember.

And dont worry, they say, were going to sense-make the fuck out of this imperialism right now. Jordan and Jim and Jamie and Brett and Eric are all going in, full tactical gear. I just have to finish up some interviews and loose ends.

But fuck me, they went to the wrong house and I went to the right one, and its there and hideous and all, It signs away its thoughts and land or else we take its kids again. And its Cook and Darwin and Deakin and its eyes are red and it can see in the dark. But not me: I can only see those glowing orbs so I shoot between thembam, bam, bam, bam, bamand briefly theres illumination, but only briefly, and I dont like what I see. So I pull my heart out of a dry well in the cellar, give it a puppy and tell it to fuck off home and wait for me there. Havent been back yet though, so I hope the puppys alright.

Off I go to work, building this Ark and raiding lost ones, and at one stage Im stuck on the wrong side of a crevasse and the tunnel is shaking and Im screaming, Throw me the whip so I can swing across! But Dr. Octopus is telling me, No, throw me your knowledge and then Ill throw you the whip. Hes saying theres no time, so I bundle my objects and stories and legacy and toss it across the void and I guess you know what happens next. I manage to get across later without the whip, then prize my knowledge from his cold, dead hands, only to lose it again to a boss villain. But thats alright, Ill get it back again. I think.

And I ask if feminism will find a place on the Ark, and then all the things that make up the fruits of that struggle (for equality?) are listed and included, except for the word itself. I argue for keeping it, and everybody is kind and they steel man my position and I feel good about all this support, that in the end all things are reducible to an essence, all things may be revealed by Occams razor. Stuff is a bit more complicated, a bit more nuanced though, when it comes to some issues around masculinity. I guess every man loves Occams razor until its time to shave his balls.

I sometimes fear I will be extradited to Wokestan and publicly executed. I still have friends and family there, and I hope theyre okay. And I would like to know if that puppy is alright. Maybe shes grown and had puppies of her own. Its been a long time since I started working on this transhumanist Ark. There are spaces for the Enlightenment, founding fathers, crypto wallets, VR goggles, breath work, meditation, leadership workshops, and micro-doses of DMT. It smells great and every surface is finished with evolutionary fitness. There is a security guard out front, but thats only to stop Jeffrey Epstein sneaking on board with his egg-shaped dick. We all know that bastard never died in prison so we have to stay vigilant, because there are kids on the Ark too and we need to keep them safe. If something happened to them, who would we practice our Vygotsky on?

Yeah, its all starting to make sense. Chaos and complexity. Institutions and decentralization. Generator functions. Perverse incentives. Bad and good faith discourse. Destruction or survival. Survival. Survival. I wonder, when that steel man inhabits my palatable, ambiguously non-white form, does it see survival in there? What does that survival look like? Is it some Bear Grylls shit, or is it a blonde girl living with cognitively diverse cavemen until she gets kicked out for getting too good with a sling shot? Certainly its a nightmare of fight or flight, my kind coming in the night with spears, or my kind eternally hyper-vigilant out on the savannah, hunted constantly by super predators and you never know where they are, and life is brutish and horrible and thats how our brains and social systems evolved, right?

The steel man leaves my body and I am myself again. I went somewhere while he was walking around in my skin, inhabiting my position. I went home. I flew over rivers and followed them like arteries to find my heart again and it was a shame the puppy didnt survive but I was home! The mangroves were breathing like a fat man into a microphone. I could never hear them before but they do have that name, the same name as lungs, those breathing roots. I know my old people must have heard them too, the same way to understand, not through a microscope but through language.

All the old girls are there at the beach going for mudshell and longshell and crab, but I cant stop because Im going for stingray with Dad there near the oyster reef, the body of that ancestral brolga hiding its egg from the narcissistic emu who stole her children. I miss my children. But Dads showing me the drag marks from the monster crocodile who lives there, and we have to go into that water where hes waiting for us. We dont mind. Were not fighting or flighting or anything like that.

We know that predator and where he is. We know the trick of how to pass him invisiblethe discipline of holding him in your awareness in that instant while also not thinking of him at all. Its a hell of a meditation, that one, and beats the shit out of TM. Because were related to our predators, and we always know where they are. A tiger shark comes and Dad turns him with his spear. I spear stingrays. Dad stirs them up and sends them crashing into my legs to make sure I know the lesson about the lie of fight or flight. If I jump or run or attack they will sting me. If I stand among them Ill be fine and theyll share their bodies for our meat. So I stand there and know that were more than what weve become. Were more than a story of survival. We were always more (us humans, I mean).

I spear way too many stingray, more than we could ever eat there. It doesnt matter. There is an abundance in this season and they are fat. That fat is what my brain is made of, and its how I evolved that brain. I cook the stingrays and thats my two hours work done to sustain our lives that day. The survival hours I guess youd call them. The rest of the day is for walking, meeting people, ritual and ceremony, arts and crafts, sex and love, feasting and sport, fighting and reconciling, governing and trading collectively. The leftover stingrays wont go to wasteit all goes into the land, feeding the plants and spirits of place that have evolved to depend on these things. I might take the livers out though, because I really like that liver. It makes my abs pop.

But the land moves and you must move with it. Altered states tend to shift in the same way and I find myself back in my fat domesticated body when the steel man is finished with it. Im losing the weight though, and feeling a bit happier. I have friends now who practice their kindness on me, no matter what kind of awful things I say, and Im just making so much sense now that people have started buying my book, which means I can afford a Keto diet and some weights and a punching bag. Sixteen hours is a lot of work, between the job and the gigs and the kids and the housework and the cooking and so on, but its worth it they say. Its better than primitive subsistence and getting raped and eaten by tigers all day, struggling for survival. Did you know a third of all caveman deaths were homicides? True, we checked the Neanderthal church records. Your ancestors were evil and stupid and unhappy. Forget them.

Its time to grow beyond this meat suit, this clumsy primate in clothes who stinks and shits and dies. Its time to outlive survival, time to upload consciousness and fly to the stars and be the demi-gods we all deserve to be, god dammit!

Thats what they tell me anyway. We all just have to keep working a little longer, extracting the last of the stuff. The tech bros say theyre too tired and sad to merely survive now, and that this world is probably all a simulation anyway. They want to embody the etymology of that weird verb, and live above. They say they will look down at the rest of us left behind in the biosphere like were squirrels or something. I wont be going. Somebody has to clean up.

I guess thats what the future is to me. Its a janitorial position, a thousand years of making our land livable again, and patiently bringing former settlers back under the Law of the land again. Its not quite survival, and its not quite deliverance, although there may be some banjos and bow hunting involved. Its survivance.

Survivance is a collaboration between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and e-flux Architecture.

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne.

More:
Building the Ark - Architecture - E-Flux