Musk Wants a Party
Good luck with that. By Luke Pickrell
Elon Musk is talking about a new political party. But he might find out what many Americans on the Left and Right have long known: the Constitution makes forming a viable alternative to the Democratic-Republican behemoth especially difficult. Even Trump knows what’s going on. “The System seems not designed for [third parties],” he punched back on social media. “The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS.”
Bankrolling a third party is financially impossible for all but a few Americans. But if anyone has the resources to break through, it’s the world’s richest man. After all, Musk bought votes for Trump in 2024 — is it called corruption or interference when the Supremes say it’s okay? — and surely has no qualms about doing it again.
The first steps — setting up a federal tax identification number, creating a bank account, identifying a treasurer, and choosing a name — are relatively straightforward. But it gets harder from there, thanks to the convoluted federal system in which each state operates with its own rules.
Time is against you in Texas, which has one of the earliest filing deadlines in the country. New parties must gather at least 1% of the total vote in the last gubernatorial election (about 83,000 signatures in 2025), and do so not with traditional petition drives, but through far more elaborate precinct conventions. To make matters more difficult, every signer must have sat out that year’s Democratic or Republican primary.
In Georgia, any newcomer must get 5% of registered voters in each congressional district. In North Carolina, new parties need signatures equal to 0.25% of registered voters from at least 50 sprawling counties. Alabama makes you requalify for every election cycle and doesn’t allow substitutes if a nominee drops out. California is far more accessible than most southern states, but candidates still need 100,000-plus affidavits or 1.1 million signatures. Musk is screwed in New York from the get-go because state law prohibits political parties from having the word "American," or any part of it, in their party names.
There’s another obstacle. All political parties need certification from the Federal Election Commission. But the FEC, created in response to widespread campaign finance abuses during the Watergate era, has not met quorum since April, when a commissioner resigned. And only a presidential nomination and a Senate confirmation manifest the FEC commissioners.
Little surprise then that it’s “pretty much unheard of for a third party to get on the ballot in most U.S. House districts.” “Within this system,” concluded Lee Drutman, a political scientist speaking to NPR, “third parties are just wasted votes and spoilers."
America’s political system is an archaic and convoluted nightmare that only the richest and powerful can hope to spin to their advantage. And Musk — strange but no dummy — will try to do just that. He knows how the Constitution works, which is why his party scheme is less of a mass movement and more an “extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield” to target “2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts” — just enough to “serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws.”
It’s the same strategy every presidential candidate uses in targeting swing states and the 400,000 voters out of 150 million who actually matter — the “tiny universe of voters who will pick the most powerful ruler in the free world for the next four years,” as David Dayen put it. Whether targeting the Senate or the Electoral College, it’s a strategy of minoritarian rule that could only work in America.
The Constitution is an unavoidable obstacle blocking any escape from the Democratic-Republican cage. So we’re back to square one — the need for political independence within the reality of a system perfectly formed to frustrate any freedom.
What’s to be done? Strategies abound, ranging from “screw electoral politics” to “take over the Greens” to “use the Democratic Party’s ballot line.” Zohran Mamdani’s initial surprise victory only re-ignites the debate. Whatever strategy one pursues, it’s clear that any discussion of a third party that doesn’t at the same time make a loud and consistent constitutional critique is missing the mark.