Four-Eight-Four [dot org]

Tonight, while talking to my buddy Will Adair online, I came up a new idea for a political party, and I’m actually halfway serious about this.

If you’ve read my political rants over the past few months, you know that I think that the two-party system in the US is fundamentally broken and only serves to preserve the status quo of government that gradually increases in size, scope, and power … and that I believe that breaking the stranglehold of the Democratic and Republican parties and having a system with 4-5+ political parties would be preferable.

The problem, of course, is launching a party that has a clearly-defined platform that can attract enough people to be a serious challenge to the two parties we have today. The Libertarians, who are arguably the most successful third party in the last fifty years, haven’t even been able to do it. The problem is that a system with, say, five political parties ends up with each of the parties having an average of maybe 15% or so of the population, with the remaining folks being independent or perhaps in smaller minor parties.

Of course, any party that broadens their platform enough to seriously challenge the Democrats and Republicans ends up in the same position that they are in right now … they have a party that doesn’t really stand for anything but vagaries and reassuring platitudes about change, hope, and all that B.S.

So, I present to you my idea .. the “None of the Above” Party.

The NotA party will have one plank in its platform … that voters ought to be able to vote AGAINST all candidates in a particular race by voting for “None of the Above” … thus signaling to the establishment “we don’t like any of the bums you’ve sanctioned as candidates.”

Each candidate for the NotA party will simply say that he stands for a vote against the other candidates. He or she would promise that, upon election, he or she would either step down in such a way as to force a special election to replace him or work to disrupt the political process until such an election were held.

I feel relatively certain that the platform of the NotA party would be attractive enough to a large enough portion of the population that it could gain ballot access.

The NotA party would have no problem running candidates who had publicly affiliated themselves with other parties. In fact, the idea would be that the NotA party would disband when we had a multi-party system, and, upon disbanding, it would encourage anybody associated with it to seek out an existing party or form a new one.

Somebody out there is bound to complain that if in an election … let’s say the general presidential election this year … the NotA candidate gets elected, then it would mean that we essentially have elected a candidate that doesn’t intend to actually serve as president, and that if such a scenario were repeated all over the nation, the government would fail to function. Well … I say let’s go for it! If the government were unable to function normally because the major parties weren’t willing to let third parties in on their little ball game, or nominate people that were acceptable to the general population … then that’s exactly what we need. Besides … the last time the Federal Government shut down because it didn’t have a budget … do you remember missing it? I seem to have gotten along OK without it.