(01-08-2019, 04:26 PM)TJBender Wrote:

(01-08-2019, 03:14 PM)mikesez Wrote: Brazil and France and Mexico regularly see new parties get created and win the Presidency.  It's because they don't have an electoral college.

What? No. A third party is going to have the deck stacked against it because there's almost 250 years of legislation and manufactured "our way or their way, no compromise" thought in place to make it impossible for third parties to get a nose in. A major party has to implode, like what happened to the Whigs, for a new party to rise. Given the current state of affairs, with both parties shifting farther and farther from the center, I think we're going to see the rise of a third party at the expense of one of the two majors. That might be the new socialist wing of the Democratic Party deciding that Bernie Sanders isn't liberal enough and running off to create a party of Tide-sucking commies. Might be centrist Democrats and Republicans acknowledging that they have more in common with each other than they do the extreme elements of their own parties (this is the one I'm hoping for). Might be the Republican Party splitting in half if Trump is impeached and ends up losing Republican Congressional support and resigning or being removed. However it happens, the nation is primed for a third party in a way that it really hasn't been before, and that would be the case regardless of an electoral college.

I am curious, though. What makes you think that taking away the electoral college would suddenly make third party presidents viable? Because when I look at removal of the electoral college, I look at it as a Constitutional guarantee that we will never have a Republican President again, and that's a bad thing.

A national popular vote would (should?) mean that the ballot would be the same across the nation.  This is covered in section 5 of the proposed amendment. There would be exactly one hoop for a new minor party to jump through and challenge for the Presidency.  Today there are 50 hoops. Section 5 would also allow, but not require, Congress to set up ranked choice voting or a runoff election or other scheme.
Once it becomes easy to set up a new party like this, candidates will see they don't need a major party to win, and they'll save money by bypassing the primary process.

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