Why not get rid of First Past the Post voting, implement Ranked Choice / Alternative voting, and then we won't have to fucking have this conversation at all?
Why not ...
Because the powers that be benefit from the status quo too much. Hell, even the Electoral College doesn't do the average person any favours, and that's still going strong
Because you can't get a message out to all 300million people normally, let alone when there are billions of dollars of propaganda working against you is very difficult. Because even if a US 3rd parties were to gain significant power they don't have the institutional knowledge to even keep the lights on, whichever opposition would eat them alive. Because if they did somehow manage to get momentum and take over they would immediately develop the exact same problems of previous political parties because these are systemic problems with your political system.
Why not invest in a strategy that doesn't makes things even worse when you fail. Political reform that would allow 3+ parties to exist are just as big of a long shot as getting a third party elected, but it doesn't split the vote and actually fixes the problem long term.
But hey I'm not an American, I have 5 viable parties to choose from. so you do you.
Can someone please explain? Does the US only have two political parties? That sounds horrendously undemocratic. I know next to nothing about US politics so I may be wrong.
Edit: Also, why is one party called "Democratic" and the other "Republican"? Does this make the Republican party non-democratic? Is this a non-official naming scheme that people created or does seriously only one of them support democracy? Thank you for the answers :)
I can't imagine anybody in the US would advocate for the nonsense in the OP above ruthlessly, relentlessly campaigning for this instead.
It's like they're cosplaying at politics.
Put simply - we have two parties, both are right wing, and while we have an established way for third parties to gain more proper/fair inclusion in the system (like debate participation, ballot access, in some cases funding) anytime a third party comes close to meeting the requirements the 2 parties mutually agree to raise the bar.
This is an extremely naive take. Most people will vote for the party they have always voted for.
It's not radical at all. It's just ineffectual, unfortunately.
What if we all wrote in ourselves? That'd be pretty radical, right?
If we all did it, yes. But there's no way we'd get enough people to do it to outweigh all the people who vote party line.
I was just trying to contribute to the bad ideas.
Yeah, why don’t the other 30 million people just change the way they do it?
How to make sure the fascist wins: get liberals to vote third party.
How to get a fascist on the ballot in the first place: keep voting for the conservative Democrat.
How to make that relevant again: Get a time machine.
The fascists are already on the ballot, in case anybody missed that detail.
I swear, this stuff barely played back when it seemed like an idle concern of the politically inclined. Today it seems entirely detached from reality.
But hey, by all means, absolutely get the kind of reform that would make this make sense again. I want a world in which this thread doesn't feel like either disingenuous trolling, a conservative psyop or entirely delusional. I want a world where Americans can vote for multiple parties and get proper coalitions and stuff.
But seriously, until that point, just vote for whoever the Democrat is.
If someone is in a swing state? Sure, vote for whoever the Democrats put up. But I think it's important to acknowledge that the Democrats are part of the problem here, not the solution. Do the Democrats want multiple parties and proper coalitions? They do not. They actively fight against those things. Anyone who blindly votes Democrat in any of the majority of states that are solidly red or blue is making the situation worse.
Anyone who blindly votes, and doesn't give strong, consistent, repeated feedback to the representative once elected, is making the situation worse. FTFY
This. There is zero chance of creating change by voting for a third party selectively in a FPTP system.
Electoral systems are known to be extremely stable because all the power is in the hands of people who benefit from the current system, again by definition. Crucially, it doesn't matter WHO they are, if they won with this system, they are for this system.
To get electoral reform you need those who benefit to find it either ethically important or politically expedient to enact reform. Right now is actually a good time to start bringing up that issue, because one has to assume there is a growing realization in Democrats and at least a segment of semi-reasonable conservatives that the current system is exposed to very, very bad things in a short timeframe.
So if the US is going to get electoral reform done without going through the process of setting the country, and subsequently the planet, on fire you need a) a Dem in power, and b) a massive consensus and outright downpour of activist pressure for this on every level of government. Probably forever, seeing how the entire rest of the system is a mess, but baby steps.
Because most small parties are ineffectual hobby project clown cart side shows.
I voted already today, voted for Volt. The tenth party on the ballot.
It's not particularly radical, just betrays some youth. People aren't neeeeeaaaaarrrrly that much alike each other, except at the most fundamental levels. Beyond basic needs though, we branch way the fuck out, in a completely, terrifyingly free world where nobody has to agree with you. Your current probably fully authoritarian parental/educational environment is supposed to insulate you from this until you have better tools for handling it, because it's pretty fucked up sometimes.
You'll just never be able to change that many minds though.
So, what happens first is the spoiler gets just enough votes to swing it for the other guy, and he goes and attacks Iraq, and then Afghanistan. Or probably Mexico this time. And they remember that we attacked them, which does not make them love us more.
So, nobody really wants that. Turns American politics into a giant game of chicken on the highway, which has been the reality for the past couple decades. But we can't just "not play", because the other guys will.
Excellent example of a dilemma.
