Major Parties

FALLS CHURCH, Va. -- With a withering blast at the two-party system, Patrick J. Buchanan formally abandoned the Republican presidential contest yesterday and joined the fight for the Reform Party nomination.Buchanan starts out as a strong contender for the Reform ticket, which offers the conservative commentator his best opportunity to carry his message of economic nationalism into next year's presidential debate. His third run for the Republican nomination had been stirring little voter excitement and has left his campaign $1.3 million in debt.

RARE IS the election in which both major parties take comfort in the results, but that is the case in Germany after the Hamburg state elections last month.Party leaders see the portents of victory in next year's national elections: the conservative Christian Democrats gained ground; their main opposition, the leftist Social Democrats, made their worst post-war showing.But to control Germany's parliament, both parties will likely need a majority coalition with a small party, just as the ruling Christian Democrats now have with the Free Democrats.

Undemocratic laws inhibit third partiesGermond & Witcover's column, ''The Supreme Court decides that two parties are quite enough,'' (May 2) correctly says that third parties ''get a black eye.''The undemocratic decision that states may discriminate against minor parties violates America's agreement to follow the democratic principles of the Helsinki Accords, including respecting ''the right of . . . political parties . . . (to) equal treatment before the law.''Discriminatory laws imposed by major parties on minor parties violate this principle.

LONDON -- The way British Prime Minister John Major apparently sees it, television and time are on his side in his battle to wipe away a wide poll deficit and win re-election against the Labor Party and its leader, Tony Blair.Major appears willing to accept Blair's challenge to engage in a TV debate during the general election campaign that will culminate with a polling day, expected to be held May 1. While such debates are common in the United States, they are extraordinary in Britain, where leaders of the major parties briefly square off twice a week during Prime Minister's Question Time.

WASHINGTON -- Amid mounting voter dissatisfaction with the nation's two major political parties, efforts of third or independent parties to gain a toehold in the political system continue to get a black eye.The latest has been administered by a Supreme Court decision upholding state laws that prevent candidates from being listed on a ballot under the banner of more than one party. About 40 states have such a ban against the ballot practice known as ''fusion,'' and only four -- New York, Oregon, Utah and Vermont -- specifically authorize it.The justices by a 6-3 vote overturned an appellate-court ruling that the prohibition in Minnesota law violated First Amendment free-speech and association rights.

WILL ROSS PEROT's new Reform Party outlast the billionaire candidate whose money was its midwife? Will the party do well enough to qualify for federal election funds in 1998 and 2000? Is a genuine third party really on the scene, ready to shake-up political arithmetic or supplant one of the existing major parties?Such questions resonate after the Reform Party's two-part convention captured some prime time from the Republicans this past weekend and will do so again when it confirms Mr. Perot's nomination next weekend.

IT'S TIME FOR an update on the current presidential campaign, which some of you older voters may recall started in approximately 1957. The next big event on the agenda is the nominating conventions, at which the two major parties will gather together and try, in the grand historic tradition of American democratic politics, to bore the nation to death. This is getting increasingly difficult, because the nation, which is not a total idiot, has pretty much stopped watching the political conventions.

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. -- Ross Perot launched his second bid for the presidency last night, dusting off his familiar charts, homespun homilies and searing attacks on the two major political parties for their failures to address the nation's economic problems."

Cellular codeSince we keep hearing that cellular phones, pagers, fax machines and modems are the reason we're running out of phone numbers, couldn't we just move all of these new uses to a new area code and leave regular phone numbers alone?That way old-fashioned phone callers won't have to contend with 10-digit dialing. Increased consciousness of when you're dialing a cellular phone or pager may be an additional benefit.David S. RobertsTowsonCorrupt partiesA story in the Aug. 30 issue, "Md. mongrel is running for president," contained an error.

WASHINGTON -- Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot announced plans last night for a third political party to run an independent presidential candidate in 1996.Mr. Perot, who dodged questions about whether he himself might be that candidate, said retired Gen. Colin L. Powell was among half a dozen "world-class people" he'd like to see as the candidate of the new Independence Party.Mr. Perot said organization of the new party will start at once in California to meet an Oct. 24 deadline to qualify for the 1996 ballot, and he also will work to meet deadlines in Ohio and Maine before the end of this year.

While the news media did an effective job this year of covering the presidential campaign between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, the press still has a major blind spot when it comes to writing about third-party contenders. According to a basic LexisNexis database search of election coverage from Aug. 5 to Nov. 5, The Washington Post and The New York Times published a combined 3,576 news stories, editorials, op-eds, photographs and letters to the editor about Mr. Obama and 3,205 items about Mr. McCain.

WASHINGTON -- There's one thing I appreciate about what I call the "X-treme" candidates in the presidential debates. When they speak, sometimes a real debate almost breaks out. The X-treme candidates are always out there, dancing on the edges of politics like skateboarders at the X Games, the annual televised "extreme" multisports event that compare to the Olympics the way demolition derbies compare to the Indianapolis 500. There's Rep. Ron Paul, the...

It's long after dark outside the Giant Food supermarket at the Dorsey's Search Village Center in Howard County, and Kevin Zeese is in the parking lot looking for votes. He spots three people standing around a car and makes his way over. Tracy Meyers and Mark Davis are visiting Giant worker Laura Riesett on her break. Zeese shakes hands, introduces himself and tells them he is running for the U.S. Senate. "I've been opposed to the war in Iraq from the beginning," he says. "I have a tax plan that will let people keep more of their money.

In no other Western democracy do third-party or independent candidates confront more obstacles and exclusions from contributing to a competitive democratic process than in the United States. These include both legal obstacles and an abject lack of media coverage. Legal impediments include ballot access barriers, such as requiring huge numbers of verified signatures subject to arbitrary challenges by state officials, as well as a winner-take-all system without the benefit of instant runoff voting or proportional representation.

What do you think of the process our major parties use to choose their nominees for president? How would you change it? Collectively, we represent 905 years of experience and wisdom as American-born citizens. And we are dissatisfied with many aspects of the process our major parties use to choose their nominees for president. We suggest the following: The process should be made shorter - don't drag out the campaigning. Instead, use a shorter amount of time and be more productive - prepare and present solid, truthful and concise ideas.

What do you think of the process our major parties use to choose their nominees for president? How would you change it? We are looking for 200 words or less; the deadline for responses is Monday. Letters become the property of The Sun, which reserves the right to edit them. By submitting a letter, the author grants The Sun an irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use and republish the letter, in whole or in part, in all media and to authorize others to reprint it. Letters should include your name and address, along with a day and evening telephone number.

WASHINGTON - The closest thing yet to a face-off between former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark for support of anti-war Democrats came here the other day at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee at which all 10 of the candidates for the party's 2004 presidential nominees displayed their oratorical wares. Mr. Dean was his customary bombastic self, hammering President Bush on the fluctuating rationales for invading Iraq and declaring that "as commander in chief, I will never send Americans to fight in a foreign land without telling the truth about why they're fighting there."

WITH VOTER participation sagging, the last thing democracy needs is a barrier to new ideas, new parties and new candidates. So the Court of Appeals ruling that makes it easier for challengers to get on the ballot in Maryland is a refreshing reform. Under state law before this ruling, alternative political parties were required to vault two hurdles before their candidates could run under their parties' labels. First they had to collect signatures from 10,000 registered voters to gain state recognition as a party, and then their candidates had to submit a nominating petition with signatures from 1 percent of the voters they hoped to represent, a burdensome and unnecessary two-level qualification.

WASHINGTON - Well, I guess Jesse Ventura won't be running for president after all. His decision against seeking re-election as governor of Minnesota as a third-party candidate no doubt takes care of that bit of fanciful speculation. There was a time when the former-professional-wrestler-turned-statesman was being mentioned as the next standard-bearer for the Reform Party, launched by another pipe-dreamer, Ross Perot, in 1992 and shattered by the wrecking ball of Pat Buchanan in 2000. But Mr. Ventura eventually broke with the Reform Party, and after early cooperation with the Democrats who controlled the state Senate and the Republicans who ran the state House, he eventually hit a brick wall.

Cash register politics corrupts democracy, limits public debate That two of the most astute political observers -- Jack Germond and Jules Witcover -- could so shallowly dismiss our Green Party drive to build a long-term political reform movement as a "little adventure" indicates the myopia of Washington insiders toward the bankrupt two major parties ("Nader is election's biggest loser," Opinion Commentary, Nov. 13). Both columnists know how cash register politics and the permanent corporate government combine to corrupt elections, weaken our democracy and hijack our government to the corporate lobbyists who swarm over our national capital.