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In United States politics, the Green Party has been active as a third party since the 1980s. The party first gained widespread public attention during Ralph Nader's presidential runs in 1996 and 2000. Currently, the primary national Green Party organization in the U.S. is the Green Party of the United States, which has eclipsed the earlier Greens/Green Party USA. There are other Green Parties in other nations, with an estimated total of about a million members.
The Green Party in the United States has won elected office mostly at the local level; most winners of public office in the United States who are considered Greens have won nonpartisan-ballot elections (that is, the winning Greens won offices in elections in which candidates were not identified on the ballot as affiliated with any political party). The highest-ranking Green ever elected in the nation was John Eder, who was a member of the Maine House of Representatives until his defeat on November 7, 2006. The Party has 305,000 registered members in states that allow party registration, as well as thousands of supporters in the rest of the country. During the 2006 elections the party had ballot access in 31 states.
Greens emphasize environmentalism, decentralization and local autonomy, in keeping with a commitment to non-hierarchical participatory democracy. The party platform states a number of social justice positions, including support for a federally funded commitment to end poverty.
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