The problem isn’t the two party system. The “perfectly democratic” EU countries are electing fascists en-masse, and when they’re not, the socialdemocrats that replace them apply similar policy. There is no EU country free from austerity policy, rising military budgets, undermining of worker rights, rising of retirement age, support to the genocidal Israeli entity and complete inaction in terms of affordability of housing, energy and food. The problem is capitalism, not “first past the post” or other technicalities of electoral systems. They all produce the same outcomes, so the root of the problem is deeper.
Oversimplification, but: In Romania, with proportional representation, if AUR (pro-Russia) gets 49%, the remaining 51% can form an alliance to shut them out of government, no matter how many parties.
In the UK, Reform can get a majority of seats with just over 30% of the vote. In fact, Labour did just that in 2024.
And yet, no one party has all the power. A party is always forced to make a coalition to form a government, and we’ve seen how the right wing is woefully incompetent at doing that.
In 2016, Dem candidate Larry Lessig (of the EFF) made election reform his entire platform, on the basis that it’s one of the main things destroying out country. He was laughed out of the race. He never expected to win, but to be laughed out … He was a Cassandra candidate; the soothsayer everyone takes as a fool.
God I wish we had ranked choice voting across the country.
Imagine a case where multiple candidates on the Dem or Con side team up against the worse candidate, promoting cooperation AND competition instead of just competition.
Right? I was so excited to sign my state’s ranked choice ballot proposal petition at the No King’s rally last month. I think it is ones of the most important issues, because it impacts all the others.
That’s the thing people never seem to understand. The 2 established parties benefit immensely from having a 2 party system - they have every incentive to prevent a third party from ever being a viable choice, and they make sure that it never is. Insofar as we’re still trying to fix the system using the system, we’re going to have to play by the rules of that system, which is determined by the 2 established parties. Long past are the days where politicians had an incentive to do what we want, they just do what’s best for themselves now.
Our predominant voting system guarantees a 2 party system. And said 2 parties are needed to change it. They just have to not do anything to keep it. No discouraging of 3rd parties is needed.
In fact parties in narrow elections will promote the 3rd party option to their opposition voters to try and spoil it to win.
I think the point was that to change the system away from a 2-party-system, the people who got into power via this system would have to agree to change to a different system which would likely lead to them not being in power.
Politicians are directly disincentivized from changing to a better system. The only direction they are incentivized to change the system to would be a 1-party-system with them in power.
That’s why a change to a better, more fair, more liberal electoral system only ever happens when a country is re-founded, e.g. after a lost war or after a revolution.
Btw: If you ignore the 10 amendments to the US constitution that were ratified in the first year (which were basically zero-day patches) and the two amendments that don’t have an effect (prohibition and cancellation of the prohibition) you end up with 15 amendments.
France had 15 full constitutional rewrites over about the same time period.
That’s true. I more meant that a politician’s duty is to work in the best interests of their voters, which I believe is why a lot of people seem to be confused as to why politicians aren’t implementing ranked choice voting or something similarly beneficial, because they don’t understand that politicians haven’t been working in the best interests of their voters for a long time.
Most Anericam voters, regardless of what position they’re voting for, tend to choose one of the two major parties, or no one at all. The exceptions happen when someone not in those parties makes duch a name for themselves that they can convince voters to deviate from that “comfortable” norm.
It’s also possible for people elected as a member of one of the parties to also support changing the very system that elected them for the better. It just takes a politician with more integrity than loyalty to a party.
When the party has tools to retaliate (censure, primarying the politician in their next election, removal of committees/assignments, etc.) it makes it even harder for those politicians to stick around long enough to sufficiently fill the political body they serve in to make change.
IRV, and Ranked Choice in general, is having decent success in adoption at local levels. Þis is þe right approach, because tackling it at þe national level first likely be met wiþ disaster. Wiþ a local-first approach, voters get used to þe system and understand it better - and fear it less - so þat when þe national push does happen, FUD works less well.
It’s a slow change, but also unlike a national effort, you can get involved and make much more of a difference at þe local level. fairvote.org is a good place to start, but grassroots efforts often have þeir own websites.
You want change, do someþing about it. Find your local IRV effort and contribute; get measures on ballots, donate money, knock on doors, make þose telephone calls. If you really want change, þere’s no excuse to not get involved.
How can you be so critical of the lack of success from the Democrats when your party hasn’t achieved ANY of its goals? They’re not perfect but they’re more successful than you.
Mmm, yes, there’s totally not a glut of ever-willing shitbags more than willing to fill in (and use their predecessors death to their advantage) and do the same or worse.
Can we see your proposed solution? Continuing to vote for the very same people who’ve made things awful with the hope that "it’ll be different this time"doesn’t really seem like a logical solution.
So you vote for different people. There’s these things called “Primaries” and “Campaigns” where you can contribute before the general election to get more amenable candidates.
The main reason we don’t see these better people is because people choose not to participate.
So you vote for different people. There’s these things called “Primaries” and “Campaigns” where you can contribute before the general election to get more amenable candidates.
How’d that work out in the '24 primary?
The main reason we don’t see these better people is because people choose not to participate.
Can you expand on your reasoning behind this statement? If we have a two party system where the two parties are incredibly polarizing, and we shouldn’t vote outside these two parties, what mechanism ensures additional voters bringing out better candidates?
In this scenario, both parties know you’re not going to vote for anyone else, so why would they care what you or anyone else thinks of them or their performance? They win by percentages not by the number of votes, so it wouldn’t make a difference whether three people or 300 million people vote.
Furthermore, why don’t you admit you extend this same faulty logic to party primaries? Are you really going to vote for the socialist candidate if it means they’ll have to face the opposing party’s candidate in the general or are you going to vote for the status-quo, establishment candidate with the belief that they’ll have a better chance at winning in the general? I’m willing to bet you believe the latter and if that’s the case, at what point are these “better candidates” supposed to come along?
Stuff changed. Are you happy with the changes? Cause I’m not. I want positive change, but I’d rather have the status quo than this. And I’d especially rather have incremental improvement rather than rapid devolution.
Refusing to vote in your best interests because you want faster change is absurd. Make changes happen where and when you can, and vote rationally.
Yup. No doubt. But the choice between “things are bad” and “fascism” is, while distasteful, an easy choice. The spoiler effect means that in a First Past the Post voting system, mathematically, if you decide to instead vote for the idealistic but unpopular “things could be better,” all you’re doing is removing a vote from “things are bad,” which only benefits “fascism.”
It sucks. I know it sucks. But it’s what we have right now. Ideally we can make a better system, but we won’t get there by letting fascism win. At least not without a LOT MORE people dying.
Again, make positive change where and when you can, and vote rationally.
This is the status quo. If you want positive change then you need to make a change instead of repeating the same behavior over and over while expecting different results.
I legitimately don’t understand how you can gesture at everything terrible happening around you while arguing that voting differently for once is “voting against your own best interests.” If that’s the case then what’s happening now is in your best interest, and you should be happy about that because this is the result of constantly maintaining the status quo every single election.
What’s happening right now is happening because people didn’t go out and vote against it. Trump didn’t gain a significant number of votes from 2020 to 2024, Harris just didn’t get nearly as many as Biden did. Yes, there were plenty of reasons behind this, but regardless, she would have been better than Trump.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of fascism is for people to not vote for the only viable non-fascist candidate.
I’m not trying to defend the system. It’s broken. I’m just saying vote rationally based on the reality you live in.
What’s happening right now is happening because people didn’t go out and vote against it
But in American elections generally (and specifically the US presidential election), with very few notable exceptions, there’s no way to vote against a candidate. I wish there were. For example, in Brazil you can “white ballot” or null vote, which people do as a protest. In Colombia this can actually force a redo on the election. But in America we can only vote in favor of one of the options presented or not vote in that race.
What’s happening now is the culmination of things that have been happening for a long time. Trump getting defeated wouldn’t have stopped it and we can look at the 2020 election as proof of this. Even after he croaks, this will happen (as evidenced by Dick Cheney’s late demise) until the people stand up against it.
The system is broken and following the rules and path laid out by that very system isnt going to fix things.
I mean, if you’re voting within a “first past the post” voting system for a solo position, then yeah you cannot vote outside the two expected, establishment choices and expect it to do anything other than spoil the next candidate you would have chosen.
You have to change the voting system first to something else like ranked choice.
Well if you’re so eager to keep people voting for the establishment choices, you really shouldn’t complain when either one of them wins, nor should you complain about the state of the government as both represent the system working exactly as you want it to.
Frankly, we should just simplify things by making everyone’s vote automatic based on which ever one of the two parties you register with and restrict any unapproved party or candidate from running for office. There’s no point in filling out ballots as this just leads to people voting incorrectly and opens the possibility of things happening outside of the establishment’s expectations, which is bad for everyone.
We just need to have faith and hold on to hope that the establishment will change the system that keeps them in power at some indeterminate point in the future, but for now we must do as the establishment commands.
Say that to those who chose to vote for third party over Harris. We now have the orange dolt bullying Latin American countries and disappearing brown people in the US among many, many other atrocities he’s committing.
Say that to the people who chose to vote for Harris over a third party. We now have the orange dolt bullying Latin American countries and disappearing brown people in the US among many, many other atrocities he’s committing.
America continues trying to fool it’s own people into thinking their 2-party system is a good idea.
The problem isn’t the two party system. The “perfectly democratic” EU countries are electing fascists en-masse, and when they’re not, the socialdemocrats that replace them apply similar policy. There is no EU country free from austerity policy, rising military budgets, undermining of worker rights, rising of retirement age, support to the genocidal Israeli entity and complete inaction in terms of affordability of housing, energy and food. The problem is capitalism, not “first past the post” or other technicalities of electoral systems. They all produce the same outcomes, so the root of the problem is deeper.
The power of my cordon sanitaire compels you!
Oversimplification, but: In Romania, with proportional representation, if AUR (pro-Russia) gets 49%, the remaining 51% can form an alliance to shut them out of government, no matter how many parties.
In the UK, Reform can get a majority of seats with just over 30% of the vote. In fact, Labour did just that in 2024.
And yet, no one party has all the power. A party is always forced to make a coalition to form a government, and we’ve seen how the right wing is woefully incompetent at doing that.
And why does that matter? If we see uniform policy results in the EU-wide, regardless of coalition in power, where’s the democracy?
In 2016, Dem candidate Larry Lessig (of the EFF) made election reform his entire platform, on the basis that it’s one of the main things destroying out country. He was laughed out of the race. He never expected to win, but to be laughed out … He was a Cassandra candidate; the soothsayer everyone takes as a fool.
It’s not that it’s a good idea. It isn’t. It’s a terrible idea.
It’s that without ranked choice voting, the spoiler effect means a third party vote is shooting yourself (and everyone else) in the foot.
God I wish we had ranked choice voting across the country.
Imagine a case where multiple candidates on the Dem or Con side team up against the worse candidate, promoting cooperation AND competition instead of just competition.
Right? I was so excited to sign my state’s ranked choice ballot proposal petition at the No King’s rally last month. I think it is ones of the most important issues, because it impacts all the others.
That’s the thing people never seem to understand. The 2 established parties benefit immensely from having a 2 party system - they have every incentive to prevent a third party from ever being a viable choice, and they make sure that it never is. Insofar as we’re still trying to fix the system using the system, we’re going to have to play by the rules of that system, which is determined by the 2 established parties. Long past are the days where politicians had an incentive to do what we want, they just do what’s best for themselves now.
Our predominant voting system guarantees a 2 party system. And said 2 parties are needed to change it. They just have to not do anything to keep it. No discouraging of 3rd parties is needed.
In fact parties in narrow elections will promote the 3rd party option to their opposition voters to try and spoil it to win.
I think the point was that to change the system away from a 2-party-system, the people who got into power via this system would have to agree to change to a different system which would likely lead to them not being in power.
Politicians are directly disincentivized from changing to a better system. The only direction they are incentivized to change the system to would be a 1-party-system with them in power.
That’s why a change to a better, more fair, more liberal electoral system only ever happens when a country is re-founded, e.g. after a lost war or after a revolution.
Btw: If you ignore the 10 amendments to the US constitution that were ratified in the first year (which were basically zero-day patches) and the two amendments that don’t have an effect (prohibition and cancellation of the prohibition) you end up with 15 amendments.
France had 15 full constitutional rewrites over about the same time period.
That’s true. I more meant that a politician’s duty is to work in the best interests of their voters, which I believe is why a lot of people seem to be confused as to why politicians aren’t implementing ranked choice voting or something similarly beneficial, because they don’t understand that politicians haven’t been working in the best interests of their voters for a long time.
Cant you vote in more parties on the legislative elections?
Most Anericam voters, regardless of what position they’re voting for, tend to choose one of the two major parties, or no one at all. The exceptions happen when someone not in those parties makes duch a name for themselves that they can convince voters to deviate from that “comfortable” norm.
It’s also possible for people elected as a member of one of the parties to also support changing the very system that elected them for the better. It just takes a politician with more integrity than loyalty to a party.
When the party has tools to retaliate (censure, primarying the politician in their next election, removal of committees/assignments, etc.) it makes it even harder for those politicians to stick around long enough to sufficiently fill the political body they serve in to make change.
IRV, and Ranked Choice in general, is having decent success in adoption at local levels. Þis is þe right approach, because tackling it at þe national level first likely be met wiþ disaster. Wiþ a local-first approach, voters get used to þe system and understand it better - and fear it less - so þat when þe national push does happen, FUD works less well.
It’s a slow change, but also unlike a national effort, you can get involved and make much more of a difference at þe local level. fairvote.org is a good place to start, but grassroots efforts often have þeir own websites.
You want change, do someþing about it. Find your local IRV effort and contribute; get measures on ballots, donate money, knock on doors, make þose telephone calls. If you really want change, þere’s no excuse to not get involved.
Always an excuse for avoiding progress from Democrats
When politicians quit working for the people and the vote machines are privately owned time to fucking riot
How can you be so critical of the lack of success from the Democrats when your party hasn’t achieved ANY of its goals? They’re not perfect but they’re more successful than you.
So do you have a solution to the problem in mind, or do you just want to throw bricks at things until they magically change somehow?
Not things. People.
Although I guess politicians are just things.
I mean, they’re getting shot and and killed, and our situation is only getting worse. Doesn’t really seem to be doing the job.
Cause people keep aiming at nobodies instead of the ones with power. I wish we lived in the world where Trump’s shooter had Kirk’s shooter’s aim.
Mmm, yes, there’s totally not a glut of ever-willing shitbags more than willing to fill in (and use their predecessors death to their advantage) and do the same or worse.
Can we see your proposed solution? Continuing to vote for the very same people who’ve made things awful with the hope that "it’ll be different this time"doesn’t really seem like a logical solution.
So you vote for different people. There’s these things called “Primaries” and “Campaigns” where you can contribute before the general election to get more amenable candidates.
The main reason we don’t see these better people is because people choose not to participate.
How’d that work out in the '24 primary?
Can you expand on your reasoning behind this statement? If we have a two party system where the two parties are incredibly polarizing, and we shouldn’t vote outside these two parties, what mechanism ensures additional voters bringing out better candidates?
In this scenario, both parties know you’re not going to vote for anyone else, so why would they care what you or anyone else thinks of them or their performance? They win by percentages not by the number of votes, so it wouldn’t make a difference whether three people or 300 million people vote.
Furthermore, why don’t you admit you extend this same faulty logic to party primaries? Are you really going to vote for the socialist candidate if it means they’ll have to face the opposing party’s candidate in the general or are you going to vote for the status-quo, establishment candidate with the belief that they’ll have a better chance at winning in the general? I’m willing to bet you believe the latter and if that’s the case, at what point are these “better candidates” supposed to come along?
“The two party system makes things terrible but dont you dare vote for any party other than the two parties or else things might become terrible.”
And people wonder why nothing ever changes.
*Gestures at everything*
Stuff changed. Are you happy with the changes? Cause I’m not. I want positive change, but I’d rather have the status quo than this. And I’d especially rather have incremental improvement rather than rapid devolution.
Refusing to vote in your best interests because you want faster change is absurd. Make changes happen where and when you can, and vote rationally.
The status quo still involves people dying.
Yup. No doubt. But the choice between “things are bad” and “fascism” is, while distasteful, an easy choice. The spoiler effect means that in a First Past the Post voting system, mathematically, if you decide to instead vote for the idealistic but unpopular “things could be better,” all you’re doing is removing a vote from “things are bad,” which only benefits “fascism.”
It sucks. I know it sucks. But it’s what we have right now. Ideally we can make a better system, but we won’t get there by letting fascism win. At least not without a LOT MORE people dying.
Again, make positive change where and when you can, and vote rationally.
Is genocide not fascism?
This is the status quo. If you want positive change then you need to make a change instead of repeating the same behavior over and over while expecting different results.
I legitimately don’t understand how you can gesture at everything terrible happening around you while arguing that voting differently for once is “voting against your own best interests.” If that’s the case then what’s happening now is in your best interest, and you should be happy about that because this is the result of constantly maintaining the status quo every single election.
What’s happening right now is happening because people didn’t go out and vote against it. Trump didn’t gain a significant number of votes from 2020 to 2024, Harris just didn’t get nearly as many as Biden did. Yes, there were plenty of reasons behind this, but regardless, she would have been better than Trump.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of fascism is for people to not vote for the only viable non-fascist candidate.
I’m not trying to defend the system. It’s broken. I’m just saying vote rationally based on the reality you live in.
But in American elections generally (and specifically the US presidential election), with very few notable exceptions, there’s no way to vote against a candidate. I wish there were. For example, in Brazil you can “white ballot” or null vote, which people do as a protest. In Colombia this can actually force a redo on the election. But in America we can only vote in favor of one of the options presented or not vote in that race.
What’s happening now is the culmination of things that have been happening for a long time. Trump getting defeated wouldn’t have stopped it and we can look at the 2020 election as proof of this. Even after he croaks, this will happen (as evidenced by Dick Cheney’s late demise) until the people stand up against it.
The system is broken and following the rules and path laid out by that very system isnt going to fix things.
I mean, if you’re voting within a “first past the post” voting system for a solo position, then yeah you cannot vote outside the two expected, establishment choices and expect it to do anything other than spoil the next candidate you would have chosen.
You have to change the voting system first to something else like ranked choice.
There’s a fun little article about it here.
Well if you’re so eager to keep people voting for the establishment choices, you really shouldn’t complain when either one of them wins, nor should you complain about the state of the government as both represent the system working exactly as you want it to.
Frankly, we should just simplify things by making everyone’s vote automatic based on which ever one of the two parties you register with and restrict any unapproved party or candidate from running for office. There’s no point in filling out ballots as this just leads to people voting incorrectly and opens the possibility of things happening outside of the establishment’s expectations, which is bad for everyone.
We just need to have faith and hold on to hope that the establishment will change the system that keeps them in power at some indeterminate point in the future, but for now we must do as the establishment commands.
There’s no such thing as a wasted vote
Say that to those who chose to vote for third party over Harris. We now have the orange dolt bullying Latin American countries and disappearing brown people in the US among many, many other atrocities he’s committing.
Whine if it makes you feel better.
Politicians aren’t owed votes, and you can’t blame voters for Kamala losing
Say that to the people who chose to vote for Harris over a third party. We now have the orange dolt bullying Latin American countries and disappearing brown people in the US among many, many other atrocities he’s committing.
See this holds true both ways.