This document discusses the two-party system in the United States. It notes that third parties have historically struggled to gain traction due to the need for party discipline. It also references Ralph Nader potentially costing Al Gore the 2000 election and cites opinions that argue the winner-take-all electoral college system leaves many voters feeling unrepresented and divides the country between two parties rather than reflecting the full diversity of public opinion. The document concludes by comparing the multi-party proportional representation systems used in Great Britain and Israel.

1. TWO PARTY SYSTEM
Mr. Geib and Mr. Fitz-Patrick
12th Grade Gov. and Econ.
October 29, 2014

2. TWO PARTY SYSTEM
• Always been this way…
• The need to have party
discipline, or else
– 1850s
– Theodore Roosevelt
– Harry Truman exception!
– Hubert Humphrey and
Richard Nixon
– Ross Perot and George
Bush
– Ralph Nader and Al Gore

3. HISTORIAN RICHARD
HOFSTADTER QUOTE
Third parties are like bees:
once they have stung, they die.
“American
Independent
Party” and
“Dixiecrats”

4. NADER AS THE SPOILER
Ralph Nader loses the election for Al Gore in Florida!

5. ELECTORAL COLLEGE

6. “... the nasty fact is that our
winner-take-all election
system, adopted from 18th
century England, has the
potential to leave up to 49.9%
of the voters in any district
feeling unrepresented --
whatever their race or
ethnicity.”
--USA Today editorial, 6/30/95

7. "Because of our peculiar
electoral law, the American
government is divided between
two parties. The American
people are not.“
-- Michael Lind, Atlantic Monthly,
August, 1992

8. "The system of proportional
representation ensures that
virtually every constituency in
the country will have a hearing
in the national and provincial
legislatures.”
-- Bishop Desmond Tutu, The
Rainbow People of God, 1994

9. "The case for [P.R.] is
fundamentally the same as that
for representative
democracy. Only if an
assembly represents the full
diversity of opinion within a
nation can its decisions be
regarded as the decisions of
the nation itself.“
--Encyclopaedia Britannica

10. GOP AS “BIG TENT” PARTY
Liberal Republicans and Libertarians versus Social
Conservatives and “Tea Party” Conservatives

11. BUILDING OF COALITIONS

12. “MULTI PARTY” GREAT BRITAIN
“Proportional Representation”

13. “MULTI PARTY” ISRAEL
“Proportional Representation”