America’s Political parties and the Electoral Process

Since the onset of America as a nation, the political arena has been dominated by two key political parties. The Republicans and the Democrats are the dominant political parties in America. The two parties are only distinguished due to their ideologies and beliefs. While the democrats are liberal, the republicans are more conservative. For instance, the democrats believe that change is necessary and can bring about benefits to the society. On the other hand, the Republicans believe that rapid change can bring more harm than good. Similarly, the Democrats believe that the government can drive change among the people while the Republicans believe that the people can only be influenced through pushing for their rights. In addition to this, the Democrats believe in reduced military spending and payment of minimum wages and percent taxation. The Republicans believe in the use of military and that taxes should not be increased for everyone based on their income.

The popularity of the two parties notwithstanding, third party presidential candidates have also been facing significant challenges. While the candidates for the two parties can appear on the ballot paper automatically, any third party candidate has to go through cumbersome procedures to appear on the ballot. In addition to this, the Electoral College also poses serious restrictions to third party candidates (Cronin & Genovese, 2010). Other factors that have played an important role in reducing the popularity of the third parties are that the Federal Electoral Commissions has placed financial restrictions on the grant. The allocations for the third parties may be less than 5% of the total allocations for the major parties in the elections. The media also undermines third parties through claims that presidential elections are two-horse races (Schmidt, 2013).

References

Cronin, T. E., & Genovese, M. A. (2010). The paradoxes of the American presidency. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schmidt, S. (2013). American government and politics today. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth.

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