- Speaker #0
Parties were never part of our founding documents in this country, right? They kind of inserted themselves in the election process over the years. And it has kind of worked as a check and balance system. Republicans checked the Democrats and Democrats checked the Republicans.
- Speaker #1
You're listening to Beyond the Ballot AZ. I'm Tom Collins, Executive Director of the Arizona Clean Elections Commission.
- Speaker #2
And I'm Gina Roberts, voter education director.
- Speaker #1
For decades, candidates for public office have tried to run independent of political parties, and Americans have grappled with how to change the two-party system. There's been quite a bit of rumbling around this lately with Elon Musk declaring he was going to start a new party. Surveys show Americans continue to be interested in what Musk is getting at.
- Speaker #2
We're here to give some context about the two-party system and what it takes to run on a third-party ticket, and where does the independent voter fit in?
- Speaker #1
So we're here with Dr. Tom Riley, professor at ASU and co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy, and the author of The Independent Voter. Dr. Riley, thanks for joining Beyond the Ballot AZ.
- Speaker #0
Thanks for having me.
- Speaker #1
Elon Musk recently attempted to start a conversation about a new national third party. Here in Arizona, how have third parties impacted our elections?
- Speaker #0
Well, like the rest of the nation, they haven't been very successful. It's exceedingly hard, as you well know, to get on the ballot. So the third parties that have appeared, like Libertarians and Green Party, and most recently No Labels, have had their own challenges as far as getting on the ballot, but their numbers are fairly small at this point.
- Speaker #1
So, you know, one of the things that, you know, some people have seen happen at the legislature, for example, is they've made it, I think, more difficult for folks to get on the ballot from those third parties than it might have been years ago. Those kinds of things, because the two parties see, at least in a general election, the third parties as kind of spoilers almost.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, and that's been kind of the dominant view throughout the United States, that the two parties don't agree. upon a lot, but they definitely agree upon keeping third parties out. And, you know, we see this all the way at the top from the Federal Election Commission, where the Federal Election Commission is the only commission that is designed to deadlock with three Republicans and three Democrats. That has evolved over time. As you know, parties were never part of our founding documents in this country, right? They've kind of inserted themselves in the election process. So over the years. It has kind of worked as a check and balance system. The Republicans check the Democrats and the Democrats check the Republicans. So we see this not only at the federal level, but we see it all the way down to voting centers and where the canvassing takes place. And that worked well in majority people, Republican and Democrats. But now that we have the majority of individuals nationally and a sizable number in Arizona identifying themselves as independents, that check and balance system. doesn't work as well.
- Speaker #2
So Dr. Riley, to that point, you know, here in Arizona, and just to clarify for our listeners, you're considered an independent voter, an unaffiliated voter, if you're not registered with one of the recognized parties here. And as you were stating, we've got a sizable amount of independent voters. They're, I think, the second highest when it comes to voter registration. So is there any appetite, or do you think Arizona could possibly move away from the two-party system? And what would that look like.
- Speaker #0
That's a good question. And to your point, yeah, the people who are not part of the Republican Democratic Party is actually out edge, right? If you count the Libertarians, no labels, and Green Party, they actually edge out the Republican vote. And for a long period of time, independents have been this very strong voting bloc. But the question of whether they can get leverage as a third party, one is that it's just exceedingly difficult to corral people who identify other, right, or nonpartisan or independent into one ideology, right, because they kind of represent, you know, the whole entire spectrum. And although many people view it more as a bell curve, right, where, you know, more fall within the moderate, it also includes individuals who feel their parties are either not liberal or conservative enough. So trying to find that ideology of a third party is real challenging. I mean, most recently, Elon Musk is coming about the American first party. And the question is, what is their idea? What is the ideology? You know, how do you bring? a group of voters together that are so diverse, right? And so not only is the system set up to thwart third-party membership and to have them participate either as individual candidates, the threshold to get on the ballot is exceedingly high. The overall issue is really kind of hard as to what would a third party look like, right? What is that ideology that would draw large enough numbers together?
- Speaker #2
So. Dr. Riley, just hearing all of this, and so the work that we do at Clean Elections, right, we're trying to connect with every voter, and we want to see participation, right, from every voter, regardless of their affiliation. This is a conundrum to me. So what I hear is we've got a very large amount of independent voters in the state, but we're not seeing high turnout from independent voters in the primary. And maybe you can shed some light on, are they turning out in general elections? What do we do here with the current system? Are independent voters voting? How do we get them to vote? Are candidates targeting independent voters, paying attention to them? Because it kind of seems like you need to. You would need that power of the independent vote, especially if you're running in a district that's not competitive.
- Speaker #0
You hit upon the key issue. Our own research has shown, and I think this reflects in other states, is that independents underperform in the primary level, but in some cases overperform in the general election. I mean, if you looked at the last, you know, the Edison data that we looked at, which is about 23,000 exit polling in the United States, we did an analysis of that. And independents were about 33 percent of the vote of people who self-identified as independent, which is actually outpaced Democrats. So they were actually a large portion of the voting. If we look at just recently, Gallup just came out with their polling on the views of the president. And if you look at that polling, it's pretty telling is that. Almost all Republicans support Donald Trump. Now, he, you know, in the Gallup polling went from 95 to 89, and all Democrats oppose him, except for like two to 4%. The shifting in polling for Trump has been solely independence. You know, that is the group of individuals. Now, it's hard to identify independence because of the differing and varying laws for each state, right? Because, I mean, some states, you have to be part of the party. a major party to vote, right? So even if you would self-identify as independent, you have to register in order to participate. But even in states like Arizona, we've made some progress in the sense of we have semi-open that you can, as an independent, participate, except for the presidential, right, primaries, which is terribly confusing. I mean, I deal with young people a lot, you know, and part of the issue is how do we get young people to vote? And we know that voting is habit-forming, right? So if we could just get them to start voting. And then socialize with others, we see an increase. And as you age, you vote more. But when you talk to young people, the voting system isn't as easy as people say it is, right? And it is confusing. You throw in there that you're a nonpartisan independent, which by the way, over 50% of young Gen Z voters are not party affiliated and have no interest in joining the party. So we have the majority of young people are not party affiliated. They're not getting cues from the parties. But when they attempt to vote. it's confusing, particularly if they're a university student, they come from a different state, then you have to say, well, you actually have to go through another step. So we're going to put another barrier in to make it confusing that if you show up on election day, you can just request a ballot, but majority of people vote by mail. So that takes you to actually calling them, who do I call? When do I call to get a separate ballot? So because of that, we've seen less and less individuals participating in the primary level.
- Speaker #1
We have more information for independent voters linked in the show notes.
- Speaker #2
You can go to azcleanelections.gov, click on the Independent tab, which is listed under Election Security, to learn more about voting as an independent in Arizona.
- Speaker #1
That's also linked in the show notes, along with links to some of the studies that Dr. Riley discussed.
- Speaker #2
Well, that's it for today's Beyond the Ballot AZ. I'm Gina Roberts.
- Speaker #1
And I'm Tom Collins. We'll see you next time.
