“Two’s company; three’s a crowd.” – English adage

You may remember the mock bumper stickers and yard signs from our last presidential election saying something to the effect of “Any Functioning Adult – 2020.”

Even looking back to earlier elections, at least a few people are always asking, “Why are there only two people with a chance of winning? Why can we not have more options?”

There are many people qualified enough to be president, but they need the backing of an experienced and widespread political structure to do the leg work of carrying out a campaign.

Ever since the Republican Party came together in the 1850s and 60s, Democrats and Republicans have been the only two parties capable of cobbling together a political operation capable of pushing their candidate over the threshold of electoral votes needed to win.

Why do other parties have such difficulty getting a foothold in the American election system? After all, most democratic countries have multiple parties holding seats in their legislative branch and often are forced to form coalitions with other parties to pass any laws and operate government.

For example, in the United Kingdom’s general election earlier this month, 13 different political parties – not including a handful of independent candidates – were elected to seats in the House of Commons, although the three biggest parties held 93 percent of the seats.

There is a multitude of reasons a third party has not been able to break through in the U.S., but, in my opinion, there are three main explanations.

The first is, since our country has a tradition of a two-party system, most states have established rules benefiting only two parties when it comes to getting candidates on the ballot.

States typically allow the two parties that receive the most votes in the previous election to have their candidates automatically placed on the ballot. These are almost always Republicans and Democrats even in states where one party is dominant.

Other parties are forced to pay a filing fee or collect enough signatures by petition for states to place their candidates on the ballot. The same is true for independent candidates. The quantity of signatures needed is usually a set number determined by state law or a percentage of votes cast in a previous election. Some states waive the signature requirement if the filing fee is paid.

Alabama has a high signature threshold to make the ballot as compared to other states, so we do not see many third-party candidates in most elections.

The second explanation is if a third party starts to become popular due to its support of an issue or multiple issues then either the Democratic or Republican party, or perhaps both, will simply begin supporting the same issues to cut the third party off at the knees and graft third-party supporters into their own party.

The third explanation is our federalist structure of government where power is divided between the state and national levels.

Should one party gain control of both the presidency and Congress, the other party has avenues at the state and local government levels to weaken, delay or oppose laws passed by the national government. This typically leads to dissatisfaction with what is passed, so it is rare for one party to be dominant for any extended time period.

Additionally, political science scholar David Brian Robertson points out American political parties historically unite around a few national issues but frequently leave issues that threaten to divide the party to the states. When government power is concentrated at the national level, as it is in most countries, political parties are more likely to splinter over these issues.

If you are looking for any positive news about breaking the two-party grip on elections, you probably will not find any in the immediate future. Nevertheless, one ray of hope is neither Donald Trump nor Bernie Sanders were longtime party members before their recent success in presidential elections.

Trump won the 2016 election and may win again this year, but he never was actively involved in Republican politics before running for president. Sanders, who runs as an independent as a U.S. senator from Vermont, finished strongly in second place in the Democratic primaries in 2016 and 2020.

While both men found it necessary to run under the banner of the two main parties in their presidential campaigns, we may reach a point a few elections down the road where the power of celebrity and the reach individual candidates can generate through social media could weaken political parties’ influence in high-profile elections.