Introducing the Ohio Strategy
For a century and a half, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have maintained a stranglehold on American politics. They have used this position to make life very difficult for anyone who wishes to campaign for public office on a ballot line other than theirs. This has been accomplished by ballot access laws which require exorbitant numbers of signatures on petitions for ballot access, court challenges to such petitions, “sore loser” laws which prevent Republicans and Democrats who lose in primary elections from becoming third party candidates in general elections, campaign finance laws that make it harder for third party candidates to get funding compared to Republicans and Democrats, “top two” primaries which keep third party candidates off of general election ballots, and polling requirements for debate access that limit the ability of third party candidates to bring their message to voters. Several strategies have been proposed to combat this, none of which have been very successful thus far. Here, I propose a new strategy for breaking the duopoly. I call this the Ohio Strategy for reasons which will soon be made clear.
Due to the aforementioned rigging of the American political system, it is nearly impossible for a third party candidate to compete in presidential politics. For most such candidates, the resources to contend with the war chests of Republican and Democratic presidential nominees on a nationwide basis are simply nonexistent. Michael Cloud writes in Secrets of Libertarian Persuasion that “should” presupposes “can,” and it follows that “cannot” implies “must not.” In other words, that which cannot be done should not be attempted. As such, a third party candidacy would be better served by using its smaller amount of resources in a more concentrated manner than by attempting to compete against the two major parties in all 50 states. The most effective way to do this would be to put a majority of a campaign’s money and activists into a single state in an effort to win a plurality of the popular vote in that state, and thereby its electors. (Note that in a three-way race, one can win with as little as 33⅓ percent plus 1, whereas 50 percent plus 1 is needed in a two-way race. In practice, it will be slightly less in each case due to minor candidates getting a small share of the vote.) But which state to choose? The ideal place for this strategy would be a state which has a large number of electoral votes, is a swing state, and is historically necessary for one or both of the major parties to win.
Let us begin by looking at the states with the most electoral votes at present. The top ten by the 2010 census are California (55), Texas (38), Florida (29), New York (29), Illinois (20), Pennsylvania (20), Ohio (18), Georgia (16), Michigan (16), and North Carolina (15). Some of these are safe states that a third-party campaign will find difficult to alter, let alone win. Georgia has voted Republican since 1996; California, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have voted Democratic since 1992; New Yorkhas voted Democratic since 1988; and Texas has voted Republican since 1980. That leaves Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio as targets for a single-state strategy. Let us compare these three states on the basis of how frequently they side with the winning candidate. In the past ten presidential elections (1976-2012), Florida has sided with the winning candidate nine times, North Carolina has sided with the winning candidate seven times, and Ohio has sided with the winning candidate all ten times. In fact, Ohio has not sided with a losing candidate since 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected President without winning Ohio. Most notably, no Republican candidate has ever won the presidency while losing Ohio since the party first ran a presidential candidate in 1856. While this strategy could be tried in any of the three large swing states, the combination of a small enough size to be manageable, a large enough size to be influential in a close election, a history of being vital to a major party’s electoral strategy, and status as a swing state make Ohio the ideal place to implement this strategy.
Next, let us look at feasibility. In the 2012 presidential election, a breakdown of spending by the Obama and Romney campaigns from April 11 to Election Day shows that $148 million was spent in the state of Ohio, compared to $176 million in Florida and $80 million in North Carolina. This also shows that Ohio is the best target for a single-state strategy. North Carolina is considered by the major parties to be less contested, as far less money was spent there despite its electoral votes being almost as numerous as Ohio’s. Florida is rightly considered to be a more valuable prize, but it is accordingly more expensive to compete there. Ohio is in the Goldilocks zone of feasibility; not too expensive and not too uncontested. For reference, the Johnson campaign spent $2.28 million total, and was outspent 922:1 by the Obama and Romney campaigns combined. Had he put all of his resources into Ohio, he would have only been outspent 65:1 there. Of course, it is still an uphill battle, but the climb is far more manageable and the number of activists on the ground could level the playing field far more than the funding levels would suggest.
We should also consider what sort of results to expect. One way to do this is to look at what a successful implementation of the Ohio Strategy could have done in recent elections. The 2012 and 2008 elections would have still been landslides if Ohio’s electoral votes had gone to a third party candidate. (Obama would have defeated Romney by a 314 to 206 margin with 18 going to a third party candidate, and Obama would have defeated McCain by a 345 to 173 margin with 20 going to a third party candidate.) However, the 2004 and 2000 elections would have been far more interesting. If Ralph Nader, the dominant third party candidate at the time, could have won in Ohio, then neither George W. Bush nor his major party opposition would have had a majority in the Electoral College. The result in 2000 would have been Gore 266, Bush 250, Nader 21; the result in 2004 would have been Bush 266, Kerry 251, Nader 20.
This is what the 2000 United States presidential election would have looked like if Nader had used the Ohio Strategy successfully.
This is what the 2004 United States presidential election would have looked like if Nader had used the Ohio Strategy successfully.
For the first time since 1824, the presidential election would have been sent to the House of Representatives. The procedure for this, as established by the Twelfth Amendment, is that
The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.
This would mean that the House of Representatives would have the option, much as they did in 1824, to choose someone other than the person with the most votes as President, and the third party candidate who won Ohio and forced the situation would be an option for them. It is unreasonable to expect that a group of Democrats and Republicans would agree on a third party candidate to be President, but the media coverage of this phenomenon would be non-stop. This would either give the third party candidate a chance to make a case to the nation or clearly demonstrate even to die-hard supporters of the establishment media that they are lapdogs for those in power, depending on whether the establishment media tries a blackout of the third party candidate. This would be an especially excellent opportunity for a Libertarian Party candidate, especially one who has anarchist leanings and is well-versed in libertarian theory, particularly Hoppe’s arguments against democracy.
This is what the 2016 United States presidential election might look like if the Libertarian Party candidate uses the Ohio Strategy successfully. In this scenario, the Democrat gets 264 electoral votes, the Republican gets 256, and the Libertarian gets 18. This would force the House of Representatives to decide who would be President.
Finally, there is the possibility that this strategy may not succeed at its ultimate goal of getting attention for a third party candidate by causing a procedural headache for the establishment. Even so, it is more likely to get a third party candidate noticed by pollsters, news anchors, and donors than the typical futile nationwide campaign. Failure of the Ohio Strategy would also serve as evidence that the duopoly is too entrenched to be removed by using the political system, and thus that methods of direct action are required for real change. This concludes my proposal.
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