During the dead-heat election of 2000, third party candidates should have been contenders. Ralph Nader held stadium super-rallies attended by thousands of activists, and anti-globalization protests brought many disfranchised citizens back into politics. The public said they were more receptive to third parties than ever, but the Buchanan and Nader campaigns could not pull in the votes. Why?

More Americans identify themselves as political independents than as either Democrats or Republicans. Tired of the two-party gridlock, the pandering and the lack of vision, they've turned in increasing numbers to independent and third-party candidates. In 1998, for the first time in decades, a third-party candidate who was not a refugee from one of the two major parties, Jesse Ventura, won election to state-wide office, as the governor of Minnesota. In 2000, the public was riveted by the Reform Party's implosion over Patrick Buchanan's presidential candidacy and by Ralph Nader's Green Party...