Third party talk was given a boost by economist Everett Ehrlich in The Washington Post on Dec. 14. Building on the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase, Ehrlich argued that much of what parties do is process costly information. Since the Internet has greatly lowered the cost of information, the value of parties has greatly diminished. Evidence for this view is demonstrated by Howard Dean's ability to use the Internet for fund raising and organization, which allowed him to run an insurgent campaign outside traditional party channels.

While I agree that the Internet has made insurgent campaigns easier to run within parties, I don't believe that it has done much to aid third parties. The reason is that the Constitution demands that the president receive an absolute majority of the Electoral College. This means that it is virtually impossible to elect a third party candidate as president. In practice, this has tended to make third parties unworkable at the state level, as well. Various state laws, such as those making it difficult for third parties to get on the ballot, reinforce the dominance of the two major parties.

In short, the Constitution would have to be amended and the election laws of every state would have to be drastically revised in order to make third parties viable even in the Internet age.

One reform I have long favored that is more doable would be to allow third party votes to be aggregated with those on major party lines. This can be done in 10 states, according to the New Majority Education Fund (www.nmef.org). Most prominent is New York, which has long had an influential Conservative Party, Liberal Party and Right to Life Party. When a major party candidate is endorsed by one of these third parties, votes on their line are added to his vote total. This makes their endorsement valuable and gives third parties more influence without upsetting the basic electoral system.

The recent California election is evidence that there is no real demand for third parties. Despite the fact that anyone with $3,500 could be on the ballot for governor and with 135 people running, 95.5 percent of the final vote went to candidates openly identifying themselves as either Republicans or Democrats.