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A Conversation With Tonya Millis, Libertarian Candidate For Indiana's 9th District - Indiana Public Media

In 2016, third-party candidates in the pivotal states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida won more votes than President Donald Trump's narrow margins of victory.

In Minnesota, New Hampshire and Nevada, those candidates captured enough votes to dwarf 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's own slim margins of victory, too.

This year, third-party candidates are struggling to raise funds, are less well-known and are polling beneath their 2016 predecessors and the unique challenges of campaigning during a pandemic will make reversing those trends nearly impossible.

"I think that there's some good candidates running," Ron Nielson, who managed former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson's 2016 Libertarian campaign, said in an interview. "I'm not discounting the candidates running, but they don't have the persona and the charisma has never been developed in those campaigns to capture in the moment. There's just nothing happening."

Four years ago, Trump and Clinton both faced historic levels of unfavorability, opening the door for a more meaningful third-party vote. But the 2020 race between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, is different, experts and leading members of both the Libertarian and the Green parties told NBC News.

In some instances, these candidates are not even on the ballot in critical swing states. In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania two of the most hotly contested swing states this cycle Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins will not even appear on the ballot.

Still, Hawkins, a longtime Green Party advocate and perennial candidate for office, said there's a simple reason for why the third-party candidacies have not seen the kind of support that was generated in 2016, when they accounted for more than 5 percent of the national vote.

"It's Trump," Hawkins said, adding that he heard similar reasoning when he ran for governor of New York in 2018.

"I had former supporters, donors, phone bankers, canvassers say, 'I got to vote for [New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo to resist Trump,'" he said. "Which didn't make any, really, electoral sense. But that's, I think, the mentality. That's why it's been difficult for third parties."

NBC News/Wall Street Journal polling data shows that the lack of a competitive third-party candidate may be more beneficial to Biden than to Trump. In interviews with 215 third-party voters in multiple surveys from January through August, the polling found that 2016 third-party voters are breaking toward Biden over Trump by a more than 2-to-1 margin. As the surveys found, 47 percent of those voters are backing Biden while 20 percent support Trump. One-third of that group is either undecided or backing another candidate.

Jeff Horwitt, senior vice president at Hart Research Associates, which conducts the NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls, said last time around those who voted third party "really did not like either candidate."

"And in our research across the year, it's not as though they have great feelings about Biden," he said. "But when you compare their feelings around the questions, positive, negative scales and things like that, Trump's standing is just much, much worse."

The split in this group between those who are now backing Biden and those who support Trump serves as "a really important sign for where things are headed," Horwitt added.

Lack of name recognition could also be a factor. In 2016, the Libertarian ticket featured two former governors, while the Green Party nominated Jill Stein, who had been the party's presidential candidate in 2012. The 2020 third-party and independent field features Hawkins and Libertarian nominee Jo Jorgensen, a Clemson University professor who was the party's vice presidential nominee in 1996. There's also rap mogul Kanye West, who is only on the ballot in a handful of states and has said he is "walking," not running for office, and a collage of lesser-known candidates run as the standard-bearers of tickets like the Constitution Party.

Fundraising provides a snapshot of the tough spot third-party candidates find themselves in this cycle. In 2016, Johnson raised more than $11 million and Stein more than $3 million. This cycle, Jorgensen had raised about $1.4 million as of August, while Hawkins has brought in about $300,000. West has raised just more than $11,000, discounting funds he has provided his campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission.

And while more well-known business executives and politicians ranging from Mark Cuban and Howard Schultz to Rep. Justin Amash, I-Mich., contemplated third-party or independent bids, they opted to stay on the sidelines. Others, like billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who has mulled independent bids in years past, ran in the Democratic primary this year, while former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, Johnson's running mate in 2016, ultimately opted to run against Trump in the Republican primary.

In an interview with NBC News, Weld said the 2020 third-party environment is what it is because "people are scared of Mr. Trump" and "think that he's a dangerous person."

"And so, that would lead many people I think in both those parties, the party of Jill Stein and the party of Gary Johnson to vote for Biden," he said. "Whereas in an ordinary year, they might not vote for the Democrat."

Weld said those invested in the Libertarian movement who backed his ticket in 2016 would not have much of a stomach for Trump, citing what he described as abuses of the Department of Justice, the federal government and law.

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"The Libertarians are very much conscious of the wise restraints that keep men free and they want to be able to operate within that world," he said. "And Mr. Trump is not really being too subtle about the fact that he would like to remove those parameters of our system of democracy and freedom."

But Nielson said Trump might actually be missing an opportunity to make inroads.

"There's a lot of Liberty movement voters who are somewhat undecided," Nielson said. "I think that there's a lot of them that would probably like to vote for Trump and I think that they're trying to bring themselves in that direction. I think that would be the option that I think a lot of them are probably weighing out is whether they can vote for Trump or not."

Hawkins said he believes Biden will deliver the decisive victory that current polling projects but warned the former vice president will "disappoint" progressives, which Hawkins thinks will give his party new life.

"That's our opportunity. Right now, it's tough for us," he said, adding he hopes 2020 is "just a sort of one-off situation."

"So I think our longer-term prospects are a lot better than the next [few] weeks," he said.

Read more from the original source:
'Nothing happening': Third-party candidacies appear less a factor in 2020 - NBC News

BOSTON From Ross Perot's Reform Party in the 1990s presidential elections to Ralph Nader's bid for the presidency on the Green Party ticket in 2000, third-party candidates are often called spoilers who siphon votes from a Democratic or Republican candidate and help tip the race to their opponent.

It's happened locally, in 6th Congressional District race in 2012, when Democrat John Tierney squeaked out a win with 48% of the vote and Republican Richard Tisei came in second with 47%. Libertarian candidate Dan Fishman placed a distant third, but peeled away 4.5% of the vote.

Third-parties blame the "winner-take-all" voting system, in part, for marginalizing their candidates. Many pin their hopes for a better showing in the future to a proposal on the November ballot to switch to a "ranked choice" system that asks voters to weigh candidates in order of preference.

"I definitely think it would help us as a party," said Christina Crawford, treasurer and former chairwoman of the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts, which has endorsed the changes. "We will start getting more votes, and because of that I think we'll see more people interested in running for office as Libertarians."

Crawford believes so strongly in the cause she has contributed more than $17,000 of her own money into the Yes on 2 campaign.

Question 2 on the Nov. 3 ballot, if approved, would upend how the state has chosen congressional, state and municipal leaders for hundreds of years. Ballots would look different, voters would have do more homework, and close races might not be decided on Election Day.

Under the system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the last-place candidate is removed from the running and votes for that candidate are redistributed based on their supporters' second choices.

This "instant runoff" process repeats until one candidate has picked up more than 50% of the vote.

While some cities, including San Francisco and Cambridge, have used ranked choice voting for years, Maine is the only state to make the switch broadly. It will use ranked choice in the Nov. 3 presidential election, after the state's Supreme Judicial Court rejected a GOP-led effort aimed at preventing its use.

Driven by voter dissatisfaction with the two major parties, Libertarians have seen a surge in numbers in recent years, even as other parties shrink. Despite that, Libertarian candidates have yet to win any federal or statewide offices and have performed poorly in recent elections.

Supporters of ranked choice say it will essentially break the two-party hold on elections, giving Libertarians and other third-party candidates a better chance.

Critics of ranked choice voting say the changes will only redistribute votes among Republican or Democratic candidates and won't benefit third parties.

They also criticize the system as confusing.

"Libertarians have this fantasy that ranked choice voting is going to deliver them to the promised land," said Anthony Amore, a 2018 Republican nominee for secretary of state and interim spokesman for the No on 2 committee. "When, in fact, nowhere has it ever elevated a third party."

Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse forThe Salem News and its sisternewspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhi.com.

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Third parties pin hopes on ranked choice voting - The Salem News

The EU welcomes the agreement reached on 10 October on a humanitarian ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The EU urges the sides to strictly abide by this agreement and calls on all actors, including external parties, to refrain from any actions that may lead to further casualties. In this respect, we note with extreme concern the reports of continued military activities, including against civilian targets, as well as civilian casualties and urge the sides to ensure full respect of the agreement on the ground.

The EU calls upon the sides to engage in substantive negotiations without delay under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, without preconditions and on the basis of the agreed upon principles.

The EU continues to support the work of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs in seeking a negotiated political solution to the conflict and will remain engaged in efforts towards lasting peace in the region.

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Nagorno-Karabakh: Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union - EU News

EU Commissioner of Competition Margrethe Vestager speaks during an interview to AFP at the European Commission in Brussels on May 3, 2019.

EMMANUEL DUNAND | AFP | Getty Images

The likes of Apple, Google and Facebook could soon find themselves on a new EU "hit list" that's designed to curb their market power and increase competition.

Regulators in the European Union are drawing up a list of around 20 large internet companies they want to comply with tougher rules than smaller firms, according to a report published in the Financial Times on Monday.

Companies on the list will reportedly have to share data with rivals and be more transparent on how they gather information.

Lawmakers in Brussels want to force big tech companies to change their business practices without a lengthy investigation or the need to provide proof that they have broken laws already in place.

Many of the tech giants that the EU is reportedly set to target contend that their platforms help small businesses to thrive and provide billions of people worldwide with useful tools and services.

The European Commission was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Read the full story from the Financial Times here.

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Apple, Google and Facebook could reportedly be put on EU 'hit list' - CNBC