When I was a junior in high school, I was selected to attend Michigan's Boys State, a sort of summer camp where boys from around the state practice taking part in local, county, and state levels of politics in a massive role-playing scenario. I made friends with the other boys from Jackson who rode the bus with me, and we talked about what we thought the camp would be like and our own particular political thoughts and ideas. I was particularly impressed with one young man's ideas and overall charisma and said that I thought he could be governor.
When we got off the bus, we were each handed a colored card that separated us into two political parties (I think it was the Federalists and the Nationalists, but I can't remember ... it's been three decades). That was it. Our political party was determined by pieces of paper which split our bus right in half. Both the charismatic young man and my best friend (who was also selected for Boys State) were on the opposite party than I was. As our bus was part of the same county, we all stayed in same dorm and floor. Thus, we conspired to forget what the cards said and form our own third party, which we called the Independence Party.
I could really go on with this topic, but I want to emphasize that when word got out that we had rebelled against the two-party system and that the advisors had allowed us to form a third party, it was not well accepted. Members of our original group would continue to call themselves by their original party names rather than deal with the harassment. When the time came to do the party nominations, hardly anyone had the nerve to leave their original party nominations to take part in ours. In short, that was how I was nominated Chairman of the Independence Party and got to give a speech to the entire Boys State assembly--hundreds of young men.
My candidate for governor did not win. It wasn't even close; I will point out that he refused to let me revise his speech which went off the rails and did not get much applause--while I got a standing ovation for mine. However, our candidate for Secretary of State did win, handily, over his opponents (something that our advisor said had not been done by a third party before). I will also note that he let me revise his speech.
Wow, there's a lot more to this story, but I will wrap it up with this. The basis of my speech was that too many of us allow ourselves to get wrapped up in a political party without truly examining what it means. In life today, I see many people just following the "card" they were given by their family or friends, unwilling to acknowledge the faults and failings and thus unwilling to improve them. I told them then, as I still believe now, that one should not vote a candidate just because their party has told them so; they should vote for the one who is best for the job.