Adele M. Stan is a regular contributor to IntellectualCapital.com. She is the Washington correspondent for Working Woman magazine.

The year was 1980. I was voting in my second presidential election. Neither candidate of the two major political parties, President Jimmy Carter and Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, was palatable, and the latter one was downright repelling, I thought.

After the political turmoil that had marked my childhood and teen years, my first election in 1976 had seemed a bitter disappointment. I had to choose between Carter, then the Democratic challenger, and GOP President Gerald Ford, two earnest but uninspiring leaders, and the political atmosphere of my youth had left me with little faith in either party. I agonized over my options but ultimately marked my absentee ballot for Ford, all the while longing for someone different, someone charismatic, someone with the force of personality to call the American people to their better natures.

Four years later, again given no good choice by the two major parties, I had the chance to vote for just that sort of a person. His name was John Anderson. After losing the GOP nomination, he had bolted the party to make an independent bid.

Pure no more

3rd Party candidate John Anderson in 1977

Anderson's candidacy was doomed to failure. He was a third-party candidate in a two-party system. A vote for Anderson was really a vote for Reagan, I was told, because Anderson's liberal stances on social issues would attract voters who otherwise would pull the lever for Carter. But I was pure back then, andadamant in my belief that if American society was to thrive, the two-party system must be broken by people like me, people who would defy the construct of the system and vote their passions.

Today, I am not so pure. I limit my protest votes to the primaries, where I tend to vote for a candidate who already has lost the nomination in real terms and bite the bullet to vote for someone I do not really like in the general election. Eight years of Reagan and four of Bush taught me the risks of purity: a judiciary branch that has turned against women and minorities.

Today, with the next president poised to appoint between three and five Supreme Court justices, I could not afford to vote for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader or anyone outside the system, regardless of how much sense I thought they made.

That is just the way Democrats and Republicans like it. Backed by powerful interests, the two major parties have made a joke of the notion of democracy and have been given full reign over the system.

Reform efforts need to begin with the primaries. Sure, the parties should be able set certain terms for how they choose their own nominees, but as virtual monopolies, they should also be subject to controls. The front-loaded primary system, in which only a few states get to pick the nominee, must end. It is not just the nomination process within the parties that has been corrupted by the major parties' primary structure. The prospect for viable third-party bids is affected, as well.

A candidate who wins a strong second place in his or her party's primary races has the best prospects for a viable third-party run. But if a party's nomination is determined before most Americans even get to vote in a primary, why should those who live in states with later primaries even bother? The fact is that they don't, so the best potential third-party candidates fall by the wayside in the face of inevitable defeat.

Some ideas worth considering

At least as important in the scheduling of primary races is the order in which states vote. As it stands now, Iowa and New Hampshire, two demographically homogenous states (read white and middle class) get to start the process before it moves to the South for Super Tuesday. Thus the momentum of the presidential race from its outset is skewed to serving this constituency.

A better start to the campaign would be to give the opening primary race to a geographically small but ethnically and economically diverse state, such as my native New Jersey, and to alternate the dates of subsequent primaries between the more diverse and more homogenous states. And there should be a limit as to how many states can hold their primary races on the same day.

Beyond the primary system lies the dilemma of ballot access for third parties, which are made to surmount daunting barriers of red tape in order to appear on a given state's ballot for national elections. Because national interests finance national elections, a federal role arguably exits for setting controls on the obstacles states may set before third parties for ballot access. (The Constitution allows for federal regulation of interstate commerce.)

Campaign-finance reform would go far in clearing the landscape for the advance of third parties, as well -- which is why neither major party embraces the issue with enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) needs to be changed to include third-party and non-partisan representatives. (At present, the FEC determines who gets to appear in nationally televised presidential debates.)

Think-tanking about electoral reform

Even if you agree with the suggestions for reform outlined above, the chances of any of them being enacted remains miniscule by virtue of the fact that they cannot be won through Congress. All but one member (Bernie Sanders of Vermont) belongs to either the Democratic or Republican parties. The only way to change the system is through outside pressure.

Some respected, centrist think tank needs to take up the cause and convene a non-partisan panel of experts who understand the vicissitudes of America's political machinery. The panel should make recommendations on both a national and state-by-state basis for fundamental changes in our election law.

Then the third parties and other interests need to launch ballot initiatives for change, such as that which opened the primary process in California. It will be an arduous, decade-long process, but nothing less than our democracy is at stake. Oh, to be pure once again.