Grand Illusion -- The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny by Theresa Amato, with a foreword by Ralph Nader, The New Press '09, $27.95, 432 pages, ISBN #1595583947.
It's a sadder but wiser lot that runs for president on third-party tickets, but that doesn't mean the experience changes their minds about bucking the two-party system. Harvard-trained Theresa Amato was campaign manager and counsel for Ralph Nader's 2000 and 2004 presidential runs and is still standing! In fact, Nader, who rivals Harold Stassen in his number of quadrennial appearances on the campaign circuit, contributes a foreword to this book, and 1980 independent candidate John Anderson supplies a jacket blurb.
The goodies available to harvest at the end of the campaign rainbow make it worth the while of the two major parties to pursue a scorched-earth strategy aimed at keeping interlopers out. As Amato writes, "Democrats and their allies filed a total of 24 complaints within 12 weeks to block Nader from the ballot in 18 states nationwide during the 2004 election."
"Our nation's rigid and byzantine electoral laws," argues Amato, "don't reflect a tradition of meaningful choice and instead serve to work directly against progress and political diversity." What to do then? Amato's book calls for "a functional electoral system, with real choices for the American voter, supported by her argument to set standards for federal elections and lift the overwhelming barriers to entry faced by third party and Independent candidates..." Sadly, we've heard it all before.
Amato is founder of the Citizen Advocacy Center in suburban Chicago and a public interest lawyer.
