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Letters to the Editor: A third party could work in America — but it would take one major change

A man with arms folded with a bust of President Lincoln and flags
Elon Musk listens as President Trump speaks during a news conference in the Oval Office on May 30.
(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

To the editor: Columnist Jonah Goldberg’s story on Elon Musk’s proposed new America Party doesn’t mention what, in principle, would be the best way to add a meaningful nationwide third party: We should change our voting system from plurality voting to approval voting (“Elon Musk’s America Party is a long shot,” July 8). If three or more candidates are running for an office — in this case, president of the United States — voters can “approve” as many candidates as they want. The winner of the election is the candidate with the most approvals.

In this system, one does not “waste” a vote by voting for the third-party candidate because one can still vote for a Democrat or Republican. Approval voting is currently used successfully in some local political elections as well as in elections in a variety of organizations. In theory, changing the presidential election system to approval voting would not be a constitutional challenge as long as the electoral college remains in place. Unfortunately, because approval voting would weaken the power of both major parties, we will not be seeing this change, which would strengthen democracy, any time soon.

Ben Zuckerman, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Along with many voters, Musk was tricked by President Trump and the Republicans regarding fiscal policy and the national debt.

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For years, right-wingers have howled ceaselessly about ballooning federal budget deficits. Yet at the first opportunity under Trump’s second term, the Republican Party approved legislation that will produce an even larger national deficit. All of this while the Trump administration dealt a blow to enforcement of income tax law with its cuts to the Internal Revenue Service. Hundreds of billions of dollars of income go unreported annually, and people who underreport their income are responsible for most of the gap. By contrast, the great majority of people who work for a living have their earnings withheld against their paycheck, so they largely cannot fail to obey the tax laws.

The mystery of it all is why people continue to buy the baloney.

William L. Winslow, Santa Monica

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