Coming in third

As we have seen in the last three presidential elections, getting your people organized is an exceedingly powerful political tool. Creating large groups of like-minded people, such as political parties, who will hold rallies, knock on doors and spread your message, is all but essential to win political office.

In the U.S., however, if your political philosophy precludes you from being a member of either the Democratic or Republican parties you will have a much harder time winning a race.

We have a "first past the post" electoral system at all levels of our state and federal government, meaning that when all the votes are counted, whoever has the most is the guy who gets the office, even if the most is only a small percentage of the total vote count. Because of this system, it is much more effective for large groups of relatively like-minded people to form, thus usually giving voters a clear choice between two overall ideologies.

Over the years, political parties have risen and fallen in the U.S., but, for the most part, we've always had two major contenders. When a new one comes along, it is usually focused on one issue that gets adopted by one of the big parties and then the group gets absorbed into it.

The Libertarian Party, however, is trying to challenge this usual model. They have been around for some time, and their popularity is growing, albeit slowly. So far, they have resisted attempts by the major parties to co-opt them. In fact, there are many more people leaving both the Democratic and Republican parties for the Libertarians than the opposite.

We see this growing strength in the relatively large College Libertarian Party on campus. By-and-large libertarians tend to have a firm handle on what they believe and advocate because as a small third party in a two party system, it takes a very conscious choice to join a political group that likely won't see power any time soon.

A large group of AASU students have (presumably) done this, and as I personally know several of them, I can vouch for at least those few. This low-level organization is absolutely key to being a serious political contender in the US, and, at least at AASU, they are way ahead of the game.