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This article challenges two assumptions commonly held by scholars of third parties and the American electoral system: That single-member congressional districts were established at the foundation of the United States, and that electoral reform is impossible because Democratic and Republican politicians have a unified interest against it. Examining the Apportionment Act of 1842, when Congress banned multimember districts, it demonstrates that significant reform becomes possible in odd moments when a majority of legislators see it as a way to protect themselves against challenges by other major party politicians. The article applies this finding to the current electoral reform movement by arguing that third party candidates should focus their campaign strategies on reducing the vote to incumbents and thereby increasing their reelection vulnerability. In these circumstances it would become in the interest of these legislators to support instant runoff, a system promoted by proponents of electoral reform that would protect these politicians against this strategy as well as open the door for third party victories.Proponents of electoral reform in the United States usually begin with the assumption that they face a unified, entrenched political elite determined to block any changes that threatens the current two-party system. The assumption that this system is intractable to change permeates throughout the literature on third parties. Most party scholars believe that the key institutional barrier to a multiparty democracy is the singlemember district with plurality voting, in which the candidate receiving the most votes wins the seat regardless of whether it is by a majority. 1

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