> It turns out that if a party gets at least 5% of the popular vote, they are eligible to receive millions of dollars from the government to assist their campai

> It turns out that if a party gets at least 5% of the popular vote, they are eligible to receive millions of dollars from the government to assist their campaign during the next election. And yet, in 200+ years of elections, how many times has this happened? In my ~50 year lifetime there have only been 3 viable third party candidates for President. Of those, John Anderson got 6%, Ross Perot got ~19%, and Ralph Nader got 2.4%. If you're under 40, you've probably never heard of John Anderson. He was a Republican who turned independent to run against Reagan in 1980, so no party affiliation. Perot didn't have a party and dropped out of the race early, only to enter it again a few weeks before the election. Nader ran as a Green candidate. So at least on the Presidential stage, those rules don't seem like they help any party in reality. In very rare cases they help a particular candidate with 1 election, but even at Perot's almost 20%, there was no chance he could win. It probably makes much more sense to vote 3rd party locally until such a time as your favored party becomes big enough to actually matter in Federal elections. But for races like President, we're stuck with our crappy system until we can get the political will to change to not be first past the post. I really wish we could do that.