The Libertarian Party is working to meet people where they are, says Matthew Laszacs, a Libertarian running for a state house district in Wake County in the general election this fall. For him, that means keeping taxes low, deregulating health care at the local level, and lowering costs and regulations for new businesses.

Laszacs—and a record number of Libertarian candidates, as well as candidates from various other parties that aren’t Republican or Democratic—are on Wake voters’ ballots this year. They want to shift voters’ thinking, even if winning an election is an unlikely scenario. 

All of these candidates are vying for North Carolina’s unaffiliated voters who make up the largest voting bloc in North Carolina, with 37.5 percent of registered voters. Democrats make up 31.7 percent, and Republicans make up 29.9 percent. Libertarians make up .7 percent of registered voters, while .04 percent belong to the Green Party.

“We have reached a point in time where a lot of people are getting very frustrated with the political environment,” Laszacs says. 

The intention of running as a third party candidate also goes beyond hoping to win an election for North Carolina Libertarian Party vice chair Sean Haugh and candidates Guy Meilleur and Mike Ross. Their main focus, they say, is getting the word out about their platforms and helping voters think outside of the two-party system.

The Libertarian party has 37 candidates on the November ballot in races across the state. Every voter in Wake County has at least seven Libertarian candidates on their ballot, and in some precincts, up to 10. The plan was to fill the ballot with Libertarian candidates as much as possible, says Haugh, who’s running for state agriculture commissioner and worked formerly as a pizza delivery driver in Durham. The Libertarians are united in their desire for parents to have more control over where their children go to school, competitive pay for teachers and more vocational training, and market-based solutions to traffic such as use of autonomous vehicles and relaxing transit regulations.

“That’s just more opportunities for us to present our ideas and ourselves as a complete political party better than some kind of cult of ideology or personality,” Haugh says.

This year, in addition to the Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian parties, the Green Party, We The People Party, Constitution Party, and Justice for All Party could all appear on North Carolina voters’ ballots. In order to get on the ballot under a new party name, a party needs 13,865 signatures from registered voters and approval from the North Carolina Board of Elections. 

But besides the many signatures needed, it can be difficult for parties to get on the ballot as parties also have to ensure their intent is to elect their specific candidates, not hurt other parties’ chances of winning. Earlier this year, the Justice for All party was blocked from the ballot after it was deemed to have the wrong intent, until a judge reversed that decision this week. And after getting on the ballot, third parties also have not historically been successful in state general elections. No third party candidate in North Carolina has received more than 4.1 percent of the popular vote in a contested race since 1992, when Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Scott Earle McLaughlin raked in 104,983 votes. 

Candidates’ campaign goals

Michael Dublin, a Wake County candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, is running as a Green Party candidate. Dublin grew up in Raleigh as a Democrat, but over time felt that the party let him down. A self proclaimed “foot-soldier for justice,” Dublin has always been involved with protests for social issues and says, as a Black man, the Green Party aligns more with his beliefs. 

“I was one of those people that joined the masses of people who in North Carolina became unaffiliated,” Dublin says.

Libertarian candidate Matthew Kordon is running for the state house in District 11 and says he has one election goal: receive enough votes to gain his political opponents’ attention. 

“I truly believe that we don’t technically live in a two-party system,” Kordon says. “This is just a mental trap that enough people have told themselves and because of that fact, it’s a vicious cycle. We tell ourselves that a third party can’t win, and therefore the third party can’t win.”

Last month, the state Board of Elections allowed Robert F. Kennedy’s We the People Party to appear on voters’ ballots this fall. A judge ruled yesterday against the NC Democratic Party in a lawsuit it brought against the Board of Elections for certifying We the People. As of now, RFK Jr. is the only candidate the party is running. 

The conservative Constitution Party will also have candidates on the ballot. The Constitution Party was recognized in 2018, but in 2021, the Board of Elections decided not to certify it, along with the Green Party, for failing to meet necessary requirements. This year, the board voted to recognize the party once again after it got the needed signatures, but the board initially voted to postpone that decision, allowing the party less time to submit its own candidates and prepare. The Constitution Party will run candidates for governor and lieutenant governor.

Last month, the Board of Elections voted not to allow Cornel West’s Justice for All Party ballot access, citing issues with the group’s collection of the citizen signatures required. The board referenced a video in which Donald Trump supporters appear to collect signatures for Justice for All, telling voters it will help take votes away from President Joe Biden who was running for reelection at the time. But a federal judge reversed that decision Monday in a rebuke to the board.

That’s not the first time the Board of Elections voted to deny a third party over similar concerns. Two years ago, ahead of midterm elections, the board initially denied the Green Party ballot recognition during an open investigation into fraud and ballot irregularities.

Dublin, one of three candidates the NC Green Party is running this year, says he tried to run in 2022—but after the party struggled to get certification, it decided to only run two candidates, and Dublin wasn’t one of them. This year, Dublin is looking to make a difference, either in office or with his campaign.

“My goal is to win,” Dublin says. “Secondarily, my goal is to help grow the Green Party, spread the word, and get more, hopefully younger, people to come into the party. If I don’t win, just to get the message out that there is an alternative, there is another way to do this.”

Ross, a Libertarian candidate for  governor, says he does not think the board’s past decisions to exclude parties had the people of North Carolina’s best interest in mind.

“That’s three parties that a partisan board in Raleigh basically disenfranchised and took away all the work of all of their volunteers who are out there collecting signatures,” Ross says. “That’s actually something that, in the long run, I hope, is going to move politics in the direction of people-first politics, as opposed to these special interest- first politics that we have now.”

Meilleur, a Libertarian candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives’ District 4, says that in a previous election the votes he received were more than the difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates but doesn’t really think his votes would have changed the outcome—nor was that why he ran, he says.

“I would joke to the Democratic candidate who won that I was a spoiler,” Meilleur says. “But I don’t know where more votes would come from, so I don’t see that as a primary goal.”

Impact on the election

The spoiler effect is a theory that voting for a candidate who is likely to lose can impact the results of an election. It has informed the Board of Elections’ decision to allow certain parties on the ballot in the past. 

Asher Hildebrand, Duke University public policy professor, says third party candidates, while not new, can have an impact on a local, state, and national level.

“Given just how narrow the margins of victory in many races, including the presidential race, are expected to be this year, that’s one reason why the presence of third parties on ballots in states like North Carolina feels like such a high-stakes question,” Hildebrand says. “Voting for a third party instead of one of the two major parties could very well decide the race.”

Hildebrand says he doesn’t think any of the third parties on voters’ ballots in North Carolina and around the country “are anywhere close to viable” as real options for voters. 

“But they can absolutely play spoiler in the election,” he says. 

No matter the intention, Hildebrand says, the power of third party candidates cannot be overstated. And while the existence of third party candidates is not new, the current political climate may be pushing people to consider or vote third party at the federal level.

“Many voters today are broadly frustrated with the lack of choice that having only two major parties gives them and maybe uniquely frustrated with the candidates that the two major parties have nominated for president this year,” Hildebrand says. 

Bob Drach, Libertarian candidate for state auditor, says despite people in polls saying they are fed up with Democratic or Republican candidates, they still don’t, for the most part, end up voting third party. Drach referenced a recent Meredith poll, surveying North Carolina residents on voter satisfaction where 56.7 percent of people surveyed feel a third party is needed to improve government.

“People are lying,” Drach says. “Nobody believes that third party candidates are going to win.”

Changes to voting

One way to steer voters away from so-called spoiler candidates is to make a change to the voting system itself. Hildebrand says other countries—and even some states and municipalities—have used other methods such as ranked-choice voting. But this is difficult to accomplish in North Carolina as there is not a way for citizens to get specific resolutions directly on a ballot leaving voters reliant on partisan legislators to bring the issue up.

“Even when there’s no supermajority in the legislature, elected officials tend to be averse to changing the system that got them elected,” Hildebrand says.

Ranked-choice voting was piloted in 2007 in two North Carolina municipalities, including Cary. But it only lasted for one municipal election cycle as the voting machines used at the time ultimately could not handle ranked-choice voting, meaning ballots had to be hand-counted. Even with these issues, in exit poll results, two-thirds of the 1,629 respondents preferred ranked-choice voting. 

Travis Groo, a Libertarian candidate for the state house in Wake County and chair of the Wake Libertarian Party, references this pilot and other states that have done ranked-choice voting successfully. Groo says it is a voter’s true vote and leads to winners having received a true majority vote.

“There’s no harm in trying something new, because it’s not a binary system,” Groo says. “Sometimes you have multiple candidates, sometimes the voters like the third party candidate, maybe as their second choice, and then they can put third choice for the other people. So I mean it, it just works out. So I’m a big fan of it.”

A ranked-choice voting system is one alternative Ross also agrees with and says, in a perfect world, he would one day like to see an all write-in ballot.

“I feel like everything we have that’s bad is because we’ve had these two parties consistently giving us bad policy from the top down, and I see that it seems more and more disconnected from what regular people want and need,” Ross says.

Ross says he doesn’t consider himself to be much of a politician but ran for office because he was fed up with the politicians in power and their lack of action. This same idea, he hopes, will eventually motivate others to vote third-party—maybe not this election, but some day, he says.

“I’m optimistic that if they keep doing these things that are so blatantly partisan, and they keep giving us these bad candidates, that’s how third parties will ultimately win,” Ross says. “We didn’t get to this position overnight. It’s going to take more than one election cycle. … If that protest vote goes and then starts to merge with an actual growth in that party, that’s how you become a real threat.”

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