Why don't independent parties win elections in California, much
less the rest of the country?  It wasn't that long ago third-
party candidates in presidential elections made a difference,
even if the electoral system is stacked against them.  In 2000,
Ralph Nader, running on the Green Party ticket, may well have
cost then Vice President Al Gore the presidency, by siphoning
off enough liberal votes to send the election into the now
famous hanging chad, Supreme Court aftermath that elected George
W. Bush.  Nader, however, got far fewer votes than H. Ross Perot
received in 1992, when Perot's chart-driven takes on issues of
government spending and waste resulted in the independent
candidate getting about 20 percent of the popular vote. Whether
that led to incumbent President George H.W. Bush losing the
election to Bill Clinton is still debated, but it appeared for a
while Perot's "United We Stand" political movement had the
financing and support to begin to chip away at the dominance of
the Democratic and Republic