This is a response to Heath Haussamen’s recent column, “How Libertarians blew their chance to build a legitimate party in NM.”
COMMENTARY: First of all, it’s best to address Libertarianism. Second, I address the reason we have a two-party system rather than three or more parties.
Libertarianism is an incomplete philosophy just as Marxist-Leninism is an incomplete philosophy. Libertarianism over-emphasizes the selfish side of human nature. Marxist-Leninism over-emphasizes the communal side of human nature. Both work to the exclusion of the other side of human nature. They are both incomplete philosophies in those ways.
Courtesy photo
Bill Tiwald
There are individuals in both philosophical camps who address both sides of human nature; however, they are limited in their response to both sides of human nature by the structure of their philosophy — and, more importantly, they are limited by the structure of their political party philosophy.
The Founders inadvertently built a two-party system into the Constitution. They produced a system of winner-take-all elections for seats in the two legislative bodies. One and only one person wins the election for a seat. Should they have allowed two persons, or even three persons to win a seat from a jurisdiction, there would be room for more than two major political parties.
For example, in the current race in New Mexico, if each U.S. Senate seat actually had two winners, perhaps both Martin Heinrich and Gary Johnson would win. As it is now, a Green candidate severely damages Heinrich’s chances and a Republican candidate severely damages Johnson’s chances for the one available seat, and vice-versa.
The winner-take-all system ultimately leads voters to prefer two parties because they see third parties splitting the vote in a damaging way. This happened in 1992 and 2000 in the presidential races when, respectively, Ross Perot’s and Ralph Nader’s third-party candidacies spoiled George H.W. Bush’s re-election and Al Gore’s election.
Ranked choice voting and instant runoff systems may help with two-party dominance. They are being experimented with now in some states and municipalities including Santa Fe and Las Cruces.
Bill Tiwald is a retired high school teacher and carpenter. He lives in Albuquerque. Agree with his opinion? Disagree? NMPolitics.net welcomes your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary here.