In the United State's electoral system, there are many parties, each competing for the votes. The two main parties generally get so much of the vote, due mostly to their army of loyal voters, and as such, many people feel it is not worth voting for the third party. These people do not realize the true purpose behind what is today the third parties.
Most third parties focus on one issue. They do not have platforms like the other parties, they simply care about their one issue. They attempt to get the votes and support so that people who are in charge of making policy can see that the voters care about these issues. The more votes a third party can get, the more likely the two major parties are going to sit up and take notice. If a third party candidate can convince a major party candidate to adopt their issue, their purpose has been completed. The purpose is not to win, but to get noticed. Unfortunately, this is becoming difficult to do as the major parties have discovered that if they can fire up their bases better than the other party, they can win. Thus, they generally do not do much to attract other voters.
A prime example of this was the 2006 Senate election for Virginia. In this race, Jim Webb ran off against incumbent George Allen with only a predicted 15% chance of winning. Also in the race was Gail Parker from the Independent Green Party of Virginia. Gail's issue was light rail. She wanted one built for commuters to take people off the road and to make things more efficient and less oil-dependent. Gail had the support of at least 20,000 people, through signatures, before the election, and she met with both candidates to see if they would adopt her issue. If they did, she would have dropped out and lent them her support, and thus votes. The people supporting her realized they were only supporting the issue of light rail, not voting someone into office, and thus had either of the major party candidates adopted her issue, it would have been likely they would have gotten most of those votes.
However, neither candidate adopted her issue. In the end, after the votes were counted, Gail had 25,000 people who voted for her. Had one of the two major candidates taken her offer, they would have gotten a clear lead over the other one,
and it is believed many of Gail's supporters came from people who would have voted for Allen in the absence of Gail and her rail issue. In this light, those 25,000 people decided the election by voting for what they believed in. Every single one of those votes counted and made an impact. After that, politicians could see that people cared about the rail issue, although they have not done much about it. The point is that even though the Independent Green Party did not get the
seat or their issue on the docket, they affected the election. Those people did not throw their votes away, but made a strong showing for something they cared about. This is one of the reasons why there are still parties other than Republican and Democrat, to show the bigwigs just how much people can care about issues.
With all of this in mind, just how much do you think a third party can affect things? How else can a vote or a small group of people change things?
Alot of the reforms we've had as a country (abolition, integration, the graduated tax system, and social security to name a few) began as third party inititives. I once read a historian claim that the most efficient party in American history was the populists because they managed to achieve all of there reforms without ever winning the presidency or a majority in the legislative branch.
"when you hold a pen, you are at war" Attributed to Voltaire