From the New York Times: Third-Party Spoilers, Long Fueled by Both Parties, Could Matter This Year

There is a long history of this strategy being used to pull votes away from competing candidates.


- Click here for the article.   

With modern elections often decided by extremely thin margins and billions of dollars sloshing through campaigns, both parties have ample incentives and opportunities to gain an edge through mischief involving third parties.

The jockeying around spoiler candidates is widely considered a legal yet shadowy part of political campaigning that has gone on for decades. The Sullivan episode in Alaska is far from the first time that multiple candidates with the same name have run for the same office, with the lesser-known one often deliberately trying to confuse voters. There was even an Eddie Murphy movie in 1992 based on the concept of his character’s winning a seat in Congress previously held by a deceased politician with the same name.

Usually the actors propping up spoiler candidates are careful enough about wiping away their fingerprints that they do not get caught in the kind of uproar that Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign now faces in Alaska. After a New York Times report detailing how allies of Ms. Peltola, a Democrat, had recruited little-known candidates to try to stack the ballot, Gov. Mike Dunleavy of Alaska ordered an investigation into whether the Peltola campaign should face criminal charges or civil penalties, and President Trump demanded that she be removed from the ballot. Neither suggested a specific law that had been violated.

“Ghost voters are a bad phenomenon, but it’s a phenomenon that’s been in American politics for decades,” said Benjamin Ginsberg, a prominent Republican election lawyer. “At this point there’s no legal violation. Coming when it does, it’s purely up to Alaska voters, who, after all, put both Dan Sullivans on the ballot with their votes.”


Related: 

- Provide a timeline of the use of minor parties to split the votes of major parties. How often is this strategy successful?

- Does the Libertarian Party in Texas pull votes away from the Republican Party?

- Has a Libertarian Party candidate helped swing an election towards the Democratic Party candidate in any election across the United States?

- Does the Green Party in Texas pull votes away from the Democratic Party?

- Has a Green Party candidate helped swing an election towards the Republican Party candidate in any election across the United States?