The Democratic-Republican Electoral Farce: How to beat them at their own game.

The Democratic-Republican duopoly system of government has turned elections in the United States into little more than farces necessary for the maintenance of the political status quo and the privileged positions accorded to the stooges of the ruling parties. A recent special election in Florida provides us with yet another example. Ron Littlepage has the story in an opinion piece at Jacksonville.com. He writes:

In Tuesday's special general election to fill the state Senate District 8 seat, 11,471 ballots were cast - about 3.5 percent of the registered voters . . . In one Duval County precinct, zero voters showed up. The same thing happened in a Volusia County precinct . . .

It was no surprise that John Thrasher, a former speaker of the House, won Tuesday, garnering about 90 percent of the vote. He had easily won the Republican primary last month and since no Democrat qualified for the race, that should have been it. But three no-names had signed up as write-in candidates. That's a tactic often used to close a primary to voters of one political party. In other words, if there had been no write-in candidates, Democrats and independents could have voted in September. The problem is this: Any write-in candidates go on the general election ballot. Their names don't. Only a blank is provided for a name - any name - to be written in. So Tuesday's ballot had only Thrasher's name on it. A blank has never beaten a named candidate. [Emphasis added.]

Actually, this last assertion is demonstrably false. As Ballot Access News reported on a primary race in upstate New York on September 15th:

In Putnam County, four write-in candidates seeking the Independence Party nomination for various local offices defeated their opponents, even though those opponents’ names were printed on the ballot.

Given the low voter-turnout in the Florida race, had any write-in candidate succeeded in garnering the active support of just 4% of the wider voting public, he or she would have easily defeated the duopolist candidate. Consider the following example. Though in some locales the Working Families Party has arguably become the pawn of the duopoly machine, as Sam Wilson suggests at The Think 3 Institute, in New York City they have begun taking advantage of the duopolists' electoral farce. In the City Journal Harry Siegel and Fred Siegel detail their strategy, arguing that the WFP has effectively transformed the face of the two-party system in local election:

Many political observers saw the rise of the Working Families Party as the big story of this year’s primaries, which in New York City are effectively the general elections for most offices. That’s accurate, but only part of the story. It would be more meaningful to say that in New York’s left-and-lefter political environment, the once dominant Democratic Party fell victim to its own strategy of minimizing turnout to guarantee that their core constituencies carry the day. In the WFP, the electoral face of Gotham’s public-sector unions, the Democrats found that a party to their left could beat them at their own game.