On Philadelphia’s NPR station, WHYY, this morning, Daily Beast columnist, No Labels advocate, and former Bush Administration official Mark McKinnon advocated for a third party and electoral reform, specifically to the presidential selection process.  He particularly called for support of Americans Elect, while also calling more broadly for supporting third parties.  McKinnon discussed issues of [...]

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From Politico. The Washington Post has the original story. More than two-thirds of Americans would consider voting for a third-party presidential candidate, while nearly half of all voters think a third-party is needed, a new poll shows… The most likely to support the creation a third party? A majority of independents (61 percent), liberals (60 percent) [...]

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Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, went black on Wednesday to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  This was an attempt to show what might happen if Congress passes the bill that gives the U.S. Department of Justice broad powers to police the internet in the name of intellectual property protection. Millions of people use Wikipedia [...]

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Steven Higgs, the editor of the Bloomington Alternative, takes a critical look at the media’s lack of coverage of third party candidates, in light of a panel on Al Jazeera.  Here is the video on Al Jazeera and here is the full article.  One of the more interesting aspects of the panel, which Higgs focuses [...]

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The News Star in Louisiana recently did a report on the registrants by party in Louisiana. The results were fascinating, turning up a total of 217 parties, 86 of which have only 1 member. Twelve of those registrants are members of the Jedi Party. The state has a bunch of Bananas — well, 20 of [...]

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Paul Craig Roberts has a new column out on the potential war with Iran. In it he suggests voting for Ron Paul or “for a more extreme third party candidate.” Where do we go from here? If not to nuclear destruction, Americans must wake up. Football games, porn, and shopping malls are one thing. Survival [...]

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Pat Buchanan has a new column out addressing the Ron Paul campaign. In it he addresses a potential Ron Paul third party run. There is a gnawing fear in the GOP that Paul will quit the party when the primaries are over and run as a third-party candidate on the Libertarian or some other line in [...]

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Should Ron Paul choose to run a third party presidential campaign, radio talk show host Mark Levin has said that he will punish the elder by using his energies to unseat the younger Paul. “If Ron Paul decides that he is going to go third-party, which is detrimental to this nation, and pulls a million [...]

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Cowboybyte.com has the story: Donald Trump supporters have met an official ballot deadline in Texas, paving the way for the business mogul to become a third-party candidate there, a source close to Trump tells The Blaze. Trump himself acknowledged the filing in a statement. Read more… Here is the original The Blaze story to which [...]

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LENOIR, (Dec. 26) – Two of the major Republican presidential hopefuls are learning what third party and independent candidates have known for years, that ballot access laws in most states are rigged against offering voters any real choices in primaries and on election day, said Jordon Greene, president of Free the Vote North Carolina in [...]

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Every week the New York Times prints one letter under the heading “Invitation to a Dialogue,” and then prints responses to it in the Sunday paper.  This week, the letter is calling for a “centrist” third party in America.  Any interested readers should write in to the Times. A centrist third party could prosper in [...]

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Submitted by Marc Montoni to Independent Political Report and posted at Free Virgina: Last Friday afternoon, December 23, 2011, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry were notified that they had not turned in enough valid signatures to qualify their names for Virginia’s Republican primary ballot. Predictably, this has caused feathers to fly, complete with threats of [...]

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The Washington Post-ABC News general election poll just came out and there were two scenarios under which Ron Paul was polled as a third party candidate. The first, a general election match-up between Paul, Gingrich, and Obama has Paul at 21%. The second, including a general election match-up between Paul, Romney, and Obama, also has [...]

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Darcy Richardson is the author of a series of books about Third Parties called The Others. He is the third party movement’s pre-eminent historian. However, he is also running in the Democratic primaries against incumbent President Barack Obama. Richard Winger reports that Darcy Richardson has made the ballot in Texas too. Three candidates have paid [...]

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This article by Paul Mitchell highlights how Top Two has impacted California elections, as opposed to how it was supposed to effect elections. Mitchell sets out to separate myth from reality: Much of this year’s legislative and congressional drama has focused on the decennial redistricting, but the greater impact could come from our seemingly annual [...]

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According to a recent press release, Christina Tobin will be managing the campaign of Dan O’Connor in New York’s 12 congressional district. O’Connor is challenging incumbent Nydia Velazquez in the Democratic Party primary. Tobin has a long history of work on ballot access and election reform issues and founded the Free and Equal Elections Foundation [...]

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Nevada’s most recent voter registration statistics were posted in October of 2011. Green Party: 3,033 (0.27%) Independent American Party: 51,535 (4.55%) Libertarian Party: 7,111 (0.63%) Non-Partisan: 181,960 (16.05%) Other: 3,945 (0.35%)   California’s most recent voter registration statistics are from February 2011. American Independent Party: 417,567 (2.43%) Green Party: 113,118 (0.66%) Libertarian Party: 92,246 (0.54%) [...]

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Darcy Richardson, who has commented here at IPR for a long time and was once a contributor to IPR, is running a primary challenge in the Democratic Party against incumbent President Barack Obama. Mr. Richardson is now on the ballot in four states–Oklahoma, Louisiana, Missouri, and New Hampshire. Additionally, Darcy Richardson is hoping to get [...]

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Amy Bingham of ABC’s The Note writes that third parties may well do better in 2012 than they have in the past. The article contains quotes from LP Executive Director Wes Benedict, GP spokesman Mark Dunlea, GP presidential candidate Jill Stein (apparently misidentified as the only GP candidate in the field), and Americans Elect CEO [...]

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Here’s an excerpt from an editorial post by Richard Winger at Ballot Access News: “Sham candidates” are candidates who have no sincere interest in running for office, but who get on the ballot because one of the more powerful candidates in the same race, or one of the major parties, thinks that the sham candidate’s [...]

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