According to ballot access expert Richard Winger, .
"The extreme disparity of the burdens placed on old, established parties versus new parties has no parallel in any other democratic nations in the world."" .
Rosenstone et al. divide the difficulties facing third parties into three categories: first, "barriers,"" such as constitutional and legal boundaries, second, "handicaps,"" such as few resources, and third, "major party strategies."" .
My research and analysis of the literature will follow Rosenstone et al's approach with a review of the structural barriers, including the presidential electoral system, ballot access laws, and anti-fusion laws. Second, the handicaps will be reviewed including media coverage and financial constraints with a focus on campaign finance reform as the major obstacle that third party candidates face in the two-party political system.
III. Duverger's Law (The Wasted Vote and the Spoiler Effect).
Maurice Duverger's Law began the institutional approach to explanations of party systems with this premise: .
"the simple majority single-ballot system favors the two-party system."" .
Duverger's Law is supported by a theory: the mechanical factor of conversion bias in non-proportional systems combines with the psychological factor, an aversion to vote wasting, to produce two-party systems. He was quite confident that the American two-party system confirmed his law. According to Riker, the part of Duverger's theory indicating that plurality systems cause two-party systems is more defensible than the part that says proportional systems lead to multiparty politics. Riker said that Duverger's Law needs to be modified to exempt cases where a national third party is a second party in some localities or where just one centrist party is the controlling party. Although the law was revised, it still does not seem to explain how the American major parties have sustained their dominance over such a long period or how regional parties have also failed.
