HN delays showing the reply link once conversations get to a certain depth, as a way to slow down the conversation and put a damper on flame wars.

Anyway, I don't see what difference federal funding would make. They're still not going to have a chance at winning or meaningfully affecting the policies of the major parties. In the unlikely event they do manage to win, it's basically mathematically guaranteed that they'll just displace one of the other major parties and we'll be back to a two-party system again. This is, of course, what happened in the mid 19th century when the Republican Party displaced the Whigs. There's no way around it in a first-past-the-post system. If you want third parties to be viable (and I sure do!) then you need electoral reform, not protest votes.

Federal funding would help those candidates get national TV ads and in front of more people in general. Then, with the added legitimacy of a 3rd party with that kind of money to splash around, they would likely be included in more prime time debates and other forms of media coverage. The two incumbent parties would also start to pay attention to the newcomer. It isn't a 4 or 8 year fix, but I believe it would be a major step in the right direction for this country.

So they get some attention, and then they either fade out or take over. Either way, we're back where we started. The problem isn't that third parties don't get enough attention, the problem is that the way the electoral system is designed, there can only be two significant parties. You might change the names of those two parties, but that won't really do much.

In the case of the green party, it's part of their platform to do away with FPTP voting, so potentially no, we wouldn't be back where we started.

> They're still not going to have a chance at winning or meaningfully affecting the policies of the major parties.

A third party doesn't actually don't need to win. If a candidate does not receive a majority in the electoral college I believe the house / congress decides[1]. This would also pretty much destroy both parties - they will have to compromise and come closer to the middle.

[1] http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/a...

The odds of that happening are still basically negligible. And if it did, you'd shake up or destroy the major parties, but then you'd be back to some sort of two-party system pretty much right away, whether with the incumbents or new ones.

The PECF doesn't just blindly give out $90 million dollars; it matches up to $90 million dollars of donations, dollar-for-dollar. The third-party candidate still needs to bring in donations to receive money from the PECF.

That is one aspect of PECF. The other is a grant to the presidential candidate as outlined further down in the page I linked earlier:

PARTY CONVENTION AND GENERAL ELECTION GRANTS The presidential nominee of each major party may become eligible for a public grant of $20,000,000 plus COLA (over 1974). For 2012, the grant was approximately $91,241,400 for each major party nominee. However, the two major party presidential nominees in 2012 opted out of the public financing program in the general election. Candidates themselves may not raise any other funds to be used for campaigning during the general election period. The general election limit for publicly funded candidates for 2016 is $96,140,600.

Click on "x minutes ago", reply there.