I found this entry on Thomas Knapp’s blog, Kn@ppster, and found it quite interesting. Here is an excerpt; you can read it in its entry in its entirety at the link:
I’m not one for silver bullets—no one thing will put third party candidates into contention for the presidency—but some changes just make sense. One of those changes is nominating earlier. My recollection is that the Libertarian Party used to nominate its presidential candidates the year before the election. Andre Marrou was nominated for president in 1991. Ron Paul was nominated in 1987. And so on, and so forth. It was only in 1996 that the LP moved its nominating convention into the year of the election itself.
Late nominating conventions handicap third parties. We can’t expect the kind of pre-nomination media coverage that “major party” candidates get. The sooner a party positions itself behind a nominee, the sooner that nominee has access to the party’s full pool of presidential contributors and can get to work reaching beyond the party to the American public. It’s all well and good to hope that a pre-nomination third party candidate will “break out” and catch the mainstream media eye … but it seldom works out that way.
I think Tom Knapp makes a very good point. As far as I can see, the only downside to nominating earlier is that third parties won’t get any media attention at all during the primaries. Right now they don’t get much, but it does get them at least mentioned in many newspapers.
Then again, can the third parties overcome that negative, and list their presidential nominee on the primary ballot, as just one candidate for that office? I’m honestly not sure. If so, it would look in the press as if that one candidate has a great deal of support within the party, rather than as it is now when it appears to the public that each candidate receives a little support here, and a little support there. Making third party candidates appear to have overwhelming support during the primaries can only be a good thing.
On the other hand, many third party voters wouldn’t even bother to vote during the primaries, if they knew their candidate had already been chosen, so there may be no reason to mention them at all in the mainstream media.
It’s a complicated issue, and one which should be thoroughly explored.
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Originally posted on Adventures In Frickintardistan
Last Free Voice 
The discussion about the third party candidates is a discussion that really needs to come into the light. Unfortunately the closest real contender was Ross Perot who did more to hurt the thought pros=cess than to help it. Many people at the time were willing to listen, which was a great thing. Then…. kaos occured when Perot became seen as a ‘wacko’.
It will in my opinion take nurmerous candidates that jump ship from the norm to run as third party to actually get people to understand what needs to happen. McCain this year is a great example, he is not ideologically aligned with the republicans or democrats, but has NO chance as a third party candidate. If he wee to jump ship now then the era of only two parties would be over. (not that I agree with McCain)
ENM,
Thanks for writing on this subject!
You write:
“As far as I can see, the only downside to nominating earlier is that third parties won’t get any media attention at all during the primaries. Right now they don’t get much, but it does get them at least mentioned in many newspapers.”
There are all kinds of up sides and down sides, but actually I consider the above an up side. If we already have our nominee chosen by the time the “major party” primary cycle is in swing, then that nominee will have the party’s full support (and money) behind him or her, and can try to generate excitement for THE campaign instead of still waging the not-very-well-covered internal fight.
I’d love to see THE LP nominee running commercials for THE ticket in Iowa and New Hampshire, at the same time that 50 “major party” candidates are still fighting each other internally. Right now, pre-nomination LP candidates generally can’t afford to do that. It takes the nomination to get the checkbooks open.
One down side that I didn’t mention is that if our presidential candidate intends to campaign full-time, 12-16 months is a lot longer commitment than 5 months. There are a lot of candidates who probably just couldn’t do that.
Elfninosmom thanks for getting the site up and running again and yes we should be nominating earlier. Tom has an excellent point regarding publicity. Granted there are downsides, but there are down sides to many things in life. Let’s do it earlier!
MHW
It’s not a complicated issue. The Libertarian Party is a mealy-mouthed representative of what happens when you try to compromise an ideology and mar it with politics. It needs to be abolished as soon as possible.