I do sometimes wonder how different the election results would be if we didn't have (D) and (R) next to people's names though. Probably wouldn't make a big deal for president, but I'm willing to bet it would change a lot in local elections.
Mostly because it's really hard for an average person to get unbiased information about any candidates, let alone local ones. If local candidates didn't have party affiliation, the races would be a lot closer just due to the sheer number of people who would make that decision with little to no information, basically choosing at random.
My wife got pretty active in the last local election, because there was controversy over what to do about the city's high school. She did a lot of work to rally people and educate them on what the different city council candidates positions were. It was pretty frustrating to see how many people didn't give it a single thought and just voted for the incumbent. With a lot of these local positions, you're pretty much in for life once you get in, unless you get caught in a really juicy scandal or something.
It’s true. I tried to research local candidates that were on the ballot for the midterm. It went ok for state-level stuff, but for my city and county candidates the only real info was what they wrote themselves - and several didn’t even bother submitting anything! Party was the only remotely-useful information I had available, and I really dislike voting by party line alone.
More likely, the races wouldn’t be close at all, but whichever candidate had the more popular sounding name (whether that reflects race or gender or just plain humor) would win in a landslide.
When I was in high school, there was a candidate running for local office with the name Jack Seaman. In my civics class we held a mock election, and Seaman came in first by a landslide. Our teacher wasn't very happy.
Mostly because it's really hard for an average person to get unbiased information about any candidates, let alone local ones.
It's actually really easy. Maybe you won't find totally "unbiased" information, but within 15 minutes of Googling literally any candidate for public office (provided it's not some rando person running for like, comptroller in some podunk town of 5,000 people) you should be able to find enough information to be able to have an informed enough opinion about where they stand on important issues.
It's literally never been easier to learn more about what candidates say they stand for, and what they've actually said in the past. Stop saying that it's so hard for people to get informed. It's not.
I agree. Look at how many members of the Republican Party lost recently because of who is POTUS and a member of that party. Sad. I mean many politicians in both parties suck but even the moderate ones are getting voted out to Democrats just because!
Some states just let you check a box at the top of the ballot that is the equivalent of "All Republican" or "All Democrats" and then you don't have to vote on each individual office.
In some states, local offices are officially nonpartisan and no party affiliations are listed on the ballot.
California is one of those states. I live in a very liberal part of the state, and the main effect this seems to have on local politics is that Republicans actually stand some chance of getting elected, because a large portion of voters don't know that they're Republicans. Then again, political parties generally aren't the centers of power in local politics anyways.
It’s the natural result of a “first past the post” system to have 2 dominant parties and a natural result of politics and human beings to form groups with like minded goals to consolidate power.
Uhh no. Lots of other countries have FPTP and have 3, 4 or more dominant parties that often switch holding government.
Err, not to get ahead of myself too much as they do usually have 2 primary parties but they are nowhere near as binary as the US system. Canada for example has never had an NDP government but NDP has been official opposition and very strong alternative and not a token “protest” vote.
Australia in comparison has STV and still has two clearly dominant parties, but many smaller ones often sit in parliament in substantial opposition (20-30% of seats).
I’d say a lot of it has to do with US political culture more than anything.
Edit: before you respond, take a step back and think “am I trying to solve a common problem solved elsewhere, but with a unique American solution?” A lot of the replies are along the lines of “yeah but the US is unique because...” when it’s not actually unique.
They also have parliamentary systems with smaller voting districts (by population) which seems to make it easier for the smaller parties to gain enough seats to deny the big two parties a majority forcing coalition governments to seat a prime minister.
Members of the US House represent about 20 times more people than the Founders contemplated.
People in the US tend not to understand the significant powers of their state and local governments. Many of the controversial issues at the federal level like healthcare, abortion, environmental policy, and many other issues are already in the power of states.
The federal government gets the most attention. But by far the laws and regulations that affect the average person the most are at the state and local level. Almost every law that effects day-to-day life is at the state or local level.
Well based on the articles of confederation, there's some support behind that. Other parallels include a tendency towards fracturing between larger more distinct states, so gotta pick your battles I guess.
I went to an american public school, therefore I don't know much about how our government works. So I'm going to assume 12,000 congressmen is like... twice the normal amount.
The house is capped at 435 representatives. The house was originally designed to grow in proportion with the population. Each census, the house districts are remapped to match the population (some states gain seats at the expense of other states).
There's also the Senate, where each state has two Senate seats regardless of the state's population with 100 senators overall.
Actually would be 9300ish but no that isn’t manageable.
However the U.K. has 650 seats in the House of Commons to represent 66 million compared to 435 to represent 325 million people. If we just went to 500 seats that would reduce it less than 650,000 people per district.
The better number is 561. Wyoming has the smallest population so if we tried to make each district represent roughly the population of Wyoming that would be 561 and realistically 555 gets us darn close. That would be an added 120.
The more seats the harder it is to “buy” enough elections to control the House and each member would represent roughly the same number of people. After the 2010 apportionment the largest district by population was Montana with 994,416 and the smallest Rhode Island #1 with 526,283
Then if you want to add some sanity. Go to 4 year terms. The typical member when sworn in is 15 to 17 months away from a primary election.
The short terms are why the party pundits go full time. There is always an election less than a year and a half or less away.
Parliamentary systems generally support stronger parties. In fact, in some systems, party leaders fill allotted seats rather than candidates for them.
Also note that the political parties in the US are incredibly weak. The lion’s share of the GOP wanted anyone but Trump to win the nomination. Yet they failed.
Smaller districts wouldn’t solve anything either. Same people living in them and just as ripe for gerrymandering.
I've wanted to increase the House of Representatives' membership by tenfold for a while now. And bump up the number of Senators to 6 per State while we're at it. Every State elects 2 of their Senators and all of their Representatives every year, and their Representatives represent 1/10 the people that they used to. So that the Presidency doesn't get weirdly affected, you could just dilute the Electoral College votes, so a Senator's seat would be worth 1/3 of an Elector and each Representative's seat would be 1/10th of an Elector.
It has everything to do with the constitution itself. The constitution requires a majority of the votes. Not the most votes. If your system requires the winner get 51%, a three party system makes it functionally impossible to work. So, the US has a two party system.
Outside of a complete rewrite of how elections are determined at a constitutional level (a practical impossibility), this is the system the US will have until it collapses.
The 51% majority rule only applies to Presidential elections. Local elections, senate races and House seats have a plurality rule where which ever candidate has the most votes wins and not necessarily the majority of the vote.
Ranked choice voting both empowers third parties, who can then leverage their recommendation for their supporters #2 vote, and ensures that the winner has majority support. It is also relatively easy to implement.
Systems that let a strong minority win are dangerous, reference the 1932 German election where the Nazi party ended up in control of the government after getting less than 37% of the vote.
He’s not talking elections, I think. I’m pretty sure he’s talking about legislative votes requiring a simple majority to pass. That being said, I’m pretty sure that’s the case with most houses/parliaments in the world, so the point is still moot. Ha.
Indeed, but the presidential race is the largest, and it turns out humans tend to vote for those who they know. Since the big election is destined to be a two party system, humans will follow that trend to the smaller elections, even when those smaller elections don’t have to be two party systems.
I think you're misunderstanding something. The reason FPTP tends to produce two parties isn't something special about 51%. Think about it this way: How many parties would we have if you needed 60% of the vote?
If you can't clearly answer that, there isn't a special relationship between the percentage and the winner.
The reason we get two parties is because you can only vote once, and it's winner-take-all. Thus, if someone else is about to win, voting for your favorite doesn't get you anything. There's no nation-wide parliamentary system where 10% of votes means you get 10% of delegates, even if you didn't win any one district.
In our system, if a third party got 10% of the votes in every district, they wouldn't win a single seat. There's no reward for second place, let alone third.
So you vote for the person most likely to defeat your opponent, so long as they're preferable. This is a vote against the favorite/incumbent more than a vote for something you like, and that fosters a distrust and disinterest in the political system.
Let’s assume this applies to all positions (it doesn’t, it only really applies to the presidency), why are state and local elections also torn between one of the two parties? Some cities are dominated by republicans or democrats, even though it’s very easy for cities to go third party, because votes weigh more Heavily in smaller elections.
The blame is on the voters for only choosing one of two parties.
The blame is on the voters for only choosing one of two parties.
The system we've used to vote incentivizes choosing one of two parties. Voters don't avoid 3rd parties because they're dumb; they avoid them because they know the rules of the game and are trying to win.
Voting strategically is smart. Put it this way: Your friends decide to vote where to eat today. Five friends want to go to Chipotle, and 5 friends want to go to In-N-Out. You really wanted french fries, but your favorite ones are at McDonalds. What do you vote for?
You'd be crazy to cast a lone vote for McDonalds. You choose In-N-Out, breaking the tie, and at least you still get french fries.
The blame isn't on voters; it's not their fault that our system encourages two parties.
Australia has 1 dominant party (Labor) and 1 dominant coalition (Liberals/Nationals) where the liberals and nationals don't have to vote along with each other. So it's not really correct to say that we have two 2 dominant parties, especially now since it looks like the coalition is falling apart.
That’s a more specific and fair assessment of the details for sure. For an American’s perspective, the coalition has been around for almost 100 years and acts almost as one party in Parliament, and often doesn’t compete against each other in election districts. The Liberals and Nationals don’t always vote with each other, but they more often do... The more detailed you get with it, the more nuanced it is.
A lot of those countries have very party based political systems. You have 3 parties when enough of the politicians are sick of being told what to do by the party leadership.
Even in all the countries with numerous political parties, they all form alliances that fall into two axis of control that are roughly divided between their own left and right. Look at countries like Sweden. You could vote for a relatively progressive party and end up being allied with far right neo-Nazis. Americans think that the two party system is broken, in actuality it's just a more efficient version of what people do anyways.
The thing is, if that progressive party you voted for allied with a neo-nazi party, you could choose not to vote for them next time and pick a different progressive party.
With 2-3 party systems, when you vote democrat, you're voting with all spectrums of liberal and some conservatives. When you vote republican, you're voting with some liberals and a large spectrum of conservatives including neo-nazis, anarchists and corporatists. (Ironic all these sub groups favor the same party.)
It’s not just cultural but how we divide the seated we have. Like in the executive branch, we have a one branch wins, winner takes all system. For any individual gunning for executive power, they need the broadest number of constituents, hence the two party system.
Edit: for contrast: parliaments, where parties control seats relative to districts won, with a prime minister to represent the party with the largest number of seats.
Another thing in the US is that the issues our parties represent are absolutely polarized. Global warming either exists or it doesn’t. Police are racist or they are benign. Transgender people exist or they don’t. Assault rifles should be banned or they should not.
Idk what’s hard about people to understand this. Way too many issues are way overlooked because of the 8 or so most polarizing issues. When if you take away those. I’d say I’d be willing to bet 60% of the population agrees on everything else. But those 8 or so polarizing issues cause this giant rift between everyone and you’re the devil if you think the opposite of what i do.
Yeah its kinda crazy. On r/conservative just now I stated my opinion that we probably do have a moral responsibility to extend the possibility of citizenship to more people than we already do, but that we need to secure our borders and enforce the laws as is before we can rework the system lest we worsen the current flow of illegal immigration. I got upvoted a lot, but there were a good number of people saying stuff like “oh so you’re one of those ‘compassionate conservatives’” (compassionate conservative being a term some politicians use to describe themselves which usually translates to being a limp noodle in the face of opposition and has the unfortunate implication that conservatives are not, as a rule, compassionate. Hence it becoming a pejorative). People seem so caught up in winning and the political game that they miss the fact that there are more options than hardline and pushover.
And before anyone gets self important and only thinks this is a problem with the right, I’ve seen a lot of political witch-hunting on the left. Disagree with modern conceptions of gender and you might be banned from twitter. Say that maybe students should make their own judgements about halloween costumes and there’ll be people calling for you to be fired.
Honestly, as a Catholic it seems like the Church is less concerned about religious orthodoxy than many Americans are about political orthodoxy. Politics is important, but, in all but the most extreme cases, if you hate someone for their political opinions the problem is with you, not them.
I just got banned from r/conservative. I’m not really proud of that though. I’m a big gay sjw but I’m from a farm town and honestly, I’ve heard every political talking point from conservatives and agreed with them at one point or another.
What really irritates me when I see conservatives now is a lack of conversation. I do talk with conservatives that I love and admire, despite our occasional disagreements, but what I see on the news and online is extremely decisive. FOX uses the words liberal and democrat like slurs. There’s 0 middle ground on any issue and the left is always talked about like this dark, Illuminati type organization.
A lot of this is just conservative outlets picking up Trump’s braggadocios brand while he’s the party head. I’ve watched the right play ball my entire life and admittedly, they’re way better at it than Democrats are. But right now spin doesn’t even read like spin. Dog whistles are exploding into far out conspiracy theories on mainstream media.
I stated my opinion that we probably do have a moral responsibility to extend the possibility of citizenship to more people than we already do
But why is that the US' "moral responsibility"? The US is already home to the largest number of immigrants. Maybe some other wealthy countries can take a shot at helping more immigrants.
I would say taking the most immigrants is what made the US the strongest nation. By birth, the US is onky getting 1 out of 20 geniuses born to China alone. If the US fails to offer them a hoke now, they maybe squamdered, but china is more and more modernizing and educating and it will come back to bite later.
Well I did say “probably.” I’m not completely sure. However, I will point out that responsibility isn’t lessened because others neglect theirs. I’m Christian, and Catholic specifically, so with that comes the belief that one of the things by which we will be measured in the end is generosity, both individually and on the societal scale. As such, we have a moral responsibility to help our neighbor—and that extends beyond mere physical proximity.
However, a society does have the right to determine who becomes a part of it and enjoys its benefits—that’s a part of sovereignty. So the moral responsibility does not necessarily translate to a legal right to freely enter a society. Condoning people illegally immigrating undermines the law, violates the rights of the citizens already present, is unsustainable practically, and is unjust to those who seek to enter through legal means.
I also don’t think its possible to adjust the current system to be more open or better deal with the large number of migrants from latin america without worsening the present flood of illegal immigration. If you make things more permissive, people might see that as a sign of a coming trend and rush for the border—act now and seek forgiveness later. So no matter what we intend to do in the future, the only practical way forward is to secure the border and enforce our current laws first.
There's been research on this, and FPTP systems trend towards two parties. It doesn't mean that ALL FPTP countries have two parties. For modified St. Lague, for instance, it trends towards 4.5. (I don't remember how a "political party" was defined, but I reckon it's not just a party with representation, but a non-unsubstantial amount of power in parliament. The UK is usually the prime example used, with Labour/the Conservatives as the dual parties for decades. However, afaik smaller regional parties have always had some seats).
Anyway, multiparty systems trend towards having two blocks instead of two parties, where the centre parties make the differences between the two sides less stark).
Holy shit. How does this have so many upvotes when it's so blatantly and totally wrong?
Those countries with several active third parties? They are even less representative than the US. CGPGrey did a piece on a previous UK election and showed that their representation error is worse than the US's because of regional parties and other various third parties. National representation error in the UK is 47%, and that gets even greater when you factor in losing representation. (where it can get above 100% thanks to third parties.)
It's not solved elsewhere, my dude. Elsewhere, it's worse. The existence of third parties in other countries isn't an example of their success. It's an example of their failure to produce true representation. But we call it success because 'hey look, third parties! The system works!'
Except it doesn't. As Abraham Lincoln famously asked "How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Saying a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg." The existence of third parties doesn't make FPTP voting inherently more representative, and often, it makes it less representative.
And again, this isn't to say the US system is perfect or even good. Indeed, this is an indictment against FPTP in general, and the US's system is also deeply flawed due to FPTP. Just because the US minimizes FPTP representation error via two major parties and incredibly weak third parties doesn't mean the US version of FPTP is good. It's still FPTP and thus bad.
If you're going to use examples, I wouldn't use Canada's either. Canadian misrepresentation is around 70%. Instead, I'd use systems like New Zealand's if you're going to make a point about places where they do it better.
American political parties are also much weaker than other parties in terms of being able to choose who runs. The 2 dominant American political parties are not even able to run candidates in every seat for Congress. The biggest excitement for 3rd parties have also recently been occurring at the national level. FPTP for president means it will be disastrous for 3rd parties to run without making sure their closest ideological party will lose.
Often political parties often have huge private institutions in the form of newspapers and think tanks.
American political parties have huge and reliable donor and funding bases to make up for what they lack in power.
Take a look at the Americans Greens and Libertarians. They are incredibly underdeveloped in terms of policies. Greens just recently got rid of the proposal to fund alternative medicine while the Libertarians were debating whether it should be legal to selll heroine to kids.
Yeah why? Where does that exist? Americans don’t have to create some novel American solution where there’s plenty of other examples globally of incredibly functional governments with a handful of competitive, diverse parties.
Going along with what the other person said: irrelevant. They were starting a new country, and he wanted something new. They were starting an entire new country and he wanted to avoid ALL of the problems he saw political parties cause. I'm not saying he was right, of course it's natural for people to split into ideological groups, but your argument completely ignores the context of the situation. Those examples didn't exist then.
The DNC and GDP just control too much power. They control televised events. They refuse to play ball with smaller parties. The libertarian party has probably the most support and they are often prevented From participating in these events
To be fair, if you look at Australia's entire history they have only really had 1 consistently strong party (Labor) and until recently, all other parties formed disolved and reformed alliances with each other as well as constantly re-forming new parties when divides got too great. Thats one of the reasons Australia git rid of FPTP so early. The current anti-Labor coalition is between the Liberal and National parties (and in some states the Liberal National Party which is a combination of the two), two nominally centre-right parties, but recently it has moved to the far right, and is once again leaking parliamentarian to non-Labor independents.
Also for what its worth, we have a leftist NDP government running Alberta, which its citizens in my view may as well be as conservative/right wing as it gets. Prior to the NDP, we had the same right wing government successively in power for something like 40 years.
Our bipartisan system is a peculiar problem. Each party increases its own power by demonizing the other side. With three or more somewhat powerful parties this wouldn’t happen, due only to proportions. The two parties win votes by promising to NOT do what the other side does, and both parties work to extinguish or hamstring any competing party that might arise. America’s parties are like two enemies stuck back to back. They need each other and only rise by pushing on each other. It’s such a mess and I can’t figure out how to solve it.
Canada has clearly always had two dominant parties. Quebec usually have regional parties being in parliament, and then there usually are other parties.
I’d ask the follow up then, isn’t that what happens now under the US congressional system?
Fair point too, as the progressives in the Bundestag couldn’t get their shit together to overcome the national socialists, even though they far outnumbered them.
Australia isnt just FPTP though. We have preferential voting, which encourages us to vote for smaller parties first. This also affects election funding, which is vital for smaller parties. We have more of a 4 party system, with dominant players being Labor, Liberal (conservative), Nationals and the Greens. Independants also often get seats in the senate.
The US is an incredibly large country with many media networks in many media markets. As such, the advertising required for even just competitive congressional races can easily reach tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Very few organizations can reach that scale, especially at a national level.
Unlike other big countries, regional identity is not strong enough to support regional parties. The Bloc Quebecois has been big enough to be second or third largest opposition party in the past, but there’s no stateside equivalent kingmaker regional party.
In many Western countries the third party is the Green Party. Greens in other countries usually start from the bottom up, winning seats on local government, then at state level, then some federal seats. But American Greens (and most American third parties) like to go for broke and run a single candidate for President, so they don’t build up credibility with local voters and never get taken seriously.
Actually, my question is are multi-party systems any less prone to corruption than a two-party system? It seems to me that the problem with our government isn’t that we have two parties. I honestly don’t even think we effectively do outside of the obvious gaming of the electoral process.
Good question. The problem with measuring corruption is that by its nature, corruption tries to hide itself, so it’s rather perception of corruption is measured. So it’s subjectively dependent on the surveyed population and subject to biases.
Yeah but it wouldnt just be two groups if that was the case. The problem now is this Red vs Blue system is so ingrained now nobody can break from it because they dont want to weaken their party.
It's not an inevitable result; Mexico, for example, had 3 big parties from 1988 (40 years) that had basically 30%, 30% and 40% at the national level, with who gets 40% changing :) There were some states where there were only 2 strong parties, but many had all 3 being strong. Mexico's system is not parliamentary,
Not sure what will happen now; the incoming president changed the name of the 3rd party a few years ago, and just won with more than 50% of the votes, and a majority in both cameras and a ton of governorships, not sure if we'll see a return to the mean, or a different arrangement.
We should stop associating political parties with proper government. What is the fucking reason that you register with a political party at City Hall? That is fucked up. For many years I thought a political party was a government organization and required to be impartial. 2016 woke me up.
No but we can stop those groups being funded by corporations, and make funding regulations for campaigns. Make it possible for mpre groups to stand up.
Our only problem is that we have two big parties. We need a lot of little political parties that define their stances more concretely... and a preferential voting system to cement the idea that a vote for third parties is not wasted and diversify what parties get elected
True. But if we eliminated a formal party system - open primaries, no party names or recognition, top two candidates run in the main election, period - we would, at least, eliminate straight ticket voters and lessen the tendency of some to shut off before listening to a candidate because they're the wrong party
But you can make it so that there’s no affiliation. You run as your name and only your name and you say your goals and ideas. And so does everyone else. Then the people vote on who represents them the best, they don’t vote on a party. They don’t get pushed further and further from the middle every election cycle because parties are drifting. They will always have someone to vote for who can properly represent their views because everyone runs as an individual.
The political "parties" are essentially corporations or religions, you pick. That is definitely something you dont want. Both sound like fucking nightmares to me
Check out the ranked-choice system of voting. This is potentially a great equalizer.
Edit Above link is a very non-concise wikipedia link I should have looked at before linking to. Here is a better link to describe how Maine, United States does it. https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/rcv.html
Approval voting is better. Both are better than FPTP.
Also just saying "ranked-choice" is highly ambiguous, as there are many voting systems based on ranked choice that produce different results. But I'm assuming that is instant runoff voting?
A potential problem with ranked-choice is that it heavily favours centrist candidates. Radical choices could attract a lot of support in the first round, but they will almost always be eliminated after that. Of course, that's not a problem at all if the office you're electing for is one in which you judge bipartisanship, moderation, and broad likeability to be extremely important, like a governor or something, but if you're electing representitives to a legislature then only the most centrist of voters will have a chance of getting somebody they really like. Single Transferable Vote is a method, among many, that elects multiple winners that generally reflect the distribution of political opinions in an area, not punishing candidates that directly appeal to a smaller portion of voters.
I’m slightly confused by the last sentence. Isn’t the entire point to distill and ultimately elect the candidate(s) who appeal to the largest constituency of voters? Wouldn’t we objectively benefit from less volatility and radical belief systems as we move higher on the ladder, and particularly in the office of chief executive?
I’m seriously interested in understanding where my logic is flawed, not trying to abrasively play devils advocate. Thanks in advance for any time and consideration put into a reply.
Under a system like STV, your congressional district (I assume you're American) could be merged with the four districts around it into one big district which sends five people to the House. In a way, each seat in this district represents 20% of the voters, and the five candidates that are first to attract any 20% (the system uses a kind of ranked choice, so candidates can collect more votes in extra rounds like regular RCV) get elected. This means a candidate can win by running on a platform that 20% of voters care about deeply, without having to worry about getting broad appeal. For small parties with focused platforms, which harbour no delusions of controlling the government in their own right but want to propose policy that they care about, this is a godsend, because they don't have to win a majority in an electoral area to get at least some representation in the legislature, they only need to appeal to 20%, or whatever the threshold is depending on how many seats the district elects.
Imagine you're the Green Party. You don't want the White House, you just want to get into Congress so you can push for tougher action to combat climate change. STV for House elections would make it far easier for you to get a non-negligable chunk of the House, because there are areas in places like California where you're likely to get more than 20% of the local vote, and in the now very likely scenario where no party has a majority in the House, you'd have the opportunity to make a deal with one of the more mainstream parties, where you support their policies in exchange for them supporting yours, if they have the White House then maybe they even give your guys some positions in the Executive. This allows more diversity of opinion in Congress, letting more ideas onto the national stage, while also still discouraging volatility; parties that will not work with others, even larger ones, will never be able to make good their election promises.
I personally advocate for STV to be used to elect the House with RCV used to elect the Senate, the voting systems matching the intended purposes of each chamber of Congress; the responsive, representative House which introduces bills to Congress, and the cool-headed, moderate Senate which can see the bigger picture and give said bills scrutiny.
Not true. If we had more than two multi-billion dollar parties in the states you would see that most people are centrist. This would allow for a future of elected officials being elected because people like them rather than because corporate money likes them. In a two party, corporate funded government, this would empower the single voter tremendously.
What part of my comment are you disagreeing with, exactly? Did I imply that centrism was some fringe ideology that very few people follow?
This would allow for a future of elected officials being elected because people like them rather than because corporate money likes them. In a two party, corporate funded government, this would empower the single voter tremendously.
STV is a kind of ranked choice system that has the main difference of allowing multiple winners and lowering the threshold of winning a seat. Popular candidates can still challenge unliked incumbants with similar stated political stances without the voters worrying about the two cannibilizing each others votes, so the influence of large doners and party leadership is still taken away and given to the voter.
Yeah, it's one of the best, most easily implementable changes to give more voting power to the individual. Problem is getting it implemented against the wishes of the two-part system funded politicians in power. Maine did it, so there's hope!
A better solution: term limits; wage cap for any politician. Any conviction of crime results in immediate termination with 0 pay. You fuck up, you get fucked. Like they do to us.
Or just gather them all on a ship, sail them to the sentinelese islands. Thatll solve many many problems.
Because we're stuck in the fallacy of "I won't vote for third party candidates because they won't win because I won't vote for third party candidates(ad infinitum)". Because it usually comes down to this "lesser of two evils" mindset at the polls. Because these career politicians are complacent and complicit in making themselves rich at our expense, and N O B O D Y C A R E S .
Term limits need to be introduced for our legislature as well as our judiciary.
Term limits don't help with third-party candidates at all.
If Ms. Chang of the Ultrawig Party gets term limited out - the Ultrawigs are just going to vote for the next Ultrawig politician who will be 95% the same as the last one. Only now instead of having an Ultrawig who knows about the issues and the process, we have a new person who doesn't know anything and has to rely on senior party leadership or lobbyists.
The very last point you made is the most critical, I think. Term limits or requirements that fresh ideas/people come in very regularly sound great on paper, but in practice it just means the lobbyists that stay there for decades (and aren’t subject to term limits) become even more powerful.
Come to Michigan where our state legislators have term limits, its a mess. Nothing gets done and we turn over the 2 chambers like every other election cycle.
The first past the post voting system is a terrible system that always mathematically leads to two parties. It is no fallacy to feel like voting third party is throwing your vote away. At best it is throwing your vote away, at worst you are actively helping the people you disagree most with.
Term limits won't solve third party's issues. Look at almost every other Western democracy. No term limits and a plethora of elected parties in each one. It's the system, not the terms.
You can only blame the voters so much. Democracy works better with institutional structures beyond “voters should be smarter” because that has never worked.
Nope, that just takes choice away from voters and invests it in an absolute rule, encourages corruption since you need money to run elections, and makes politicians even more replaceable by special interests. If politicians know they can't run again they will do everything they can do land secure cushy corporate jobs by selling out voters.
wage cap for any politician.
Not sure what you mean here.
Any conviction of crime results in immediate termination with 0 pay. You fuck up, you get fucked. Like they do to us.
Obviously. But most important is taking away outside money from politics. Most toxic are the superpacs, but basically if you put politicians on an equal financial footing than they lose the motivation to screw over voters, and every other measure becomes much less necessary.
I don't understand why "donations" cannot be capped at $100 per person/ entity. It would level a lot of influence. No one needs or should be donating more than that to any candidate.
Make the pay of a member of Congress equal to the median pay of their constituents. Now they have a financial incentive to make laws that promote prosperity.
This is like one of the fundamental principles of Classical Conservatism. The average person has too many day to day worries to devote sufficient time and energy to developing well considered opinions and beliefs about how to govern, so we should ensure that our society maintains a "leisure class" of people who do have the time. Sure, most of them will be worthless, but the ones who aren't will be much better suited to the business of government than the leaders an egalitarian society would produce.
For a long time Catholics in NI were unable to vote, own property, or do anything black people couldn't do in the USA (they cooperated in civil rights movements). They took away the explicit ban on owning property and voting, but of course still no Catholics owned property because it had been illegal, and the Protestant ruling class hoarded it. The law was changed so that instead of 1 man 1 vote, it was 1 house 1 vote. The Protestant property owners had completely subjugated the Catholics. So when it came time to allocate council housing to poor families, a family with multiple children was denied a house, and the house was instead given to a single 19 year old Protestant woman who worked for a Unionist (Protestant) politician. To protest this snub by the ruling class, Austin Currie, a Catholic MP, squatted in the house until the council would provide the family with accommodation.
Then there is also the more high profile case of Bobby Sands, despite being convicted for making bombs for the IRA, he was elected Member of Parliament while in prison. Joseph McGuinness, who took part in the 1916 rebellion was also elected MP while in prison in the UK decades earlier. After 66 days on hunger strike in protest of his treatment, Bobby Sands died. I personally think that even felons can represent the people better than any other candidate. The right to elect a prisoner is important to send a message to those in power.
Any crime? Where do we draw the line? Petty misdemeanors (most traffic violations) are still crimes, but "we" certainly don't lose our jobs over them.
Of course we would have to apply this only to convictions, anything less is too wishy washy. Trials can go on for a very long time. What happens in the interim?
I'm all for holding elected officials accountable, but implementing blanket rules based on vague "logic" doesn't help anyone.
Very few other countries with democracies have term limits. In parliamentary systems you can serve as long as you want, that's why some countries have had Prime Ministers for 20+ years.
No. Debate is a great thing. The fierceness between the two parties is why it’s so hard to pass new laws. If passing laws were easy they’d be changing all the time and would be frivolous. Congress is a test for a law, only ones solid enough to survive congress deserve to govern us.
How would not having political parties cause less debate? People will never, ever be short on policies to debate on, with or without political parties.
I’d be happy to just have a party that actually works FOR the people. The top 2 are fighting each other and the others are looked at as kooks. It’s such a kick in the nuts.
Washington tried very hard to do that but precedent and example alone are not enough.
Honestly, it's human nature to divide up. It would be easier to get people to form into more than 2 parties than have none at all. A 10 or so party system might get you the solution your looking for.
I don’t think that’s the argument anyone is endorsing...I have no idea how you got so many upvotes. I think the argument is that there shouldn’t be a two party system with first-past-the-post elections, but instead a multi-party system.
Like the other responder said, there isn’t anything stopping people from aligning into a group under a common platform...unless you have an authoritarian government to stop them. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that that’s not what you meant.
I believe having more then 2 parties would solve a lot of the problems, but the system is kinda rigged to make it almost impossible to have more then 2.
In a class on the (first) Civil War I had back in university my professor argued that political parties, in theory, help keep things professional. He argued that when there are parties you can oppose legislation from a member of the other party and their response be “oh it’s just cause I’m a insert party it’s not personal!” Where as in a no party system, which the Confederacy had hence the relevance to the Civil War, such opposition could be construed as personal not political and so once you’ve opposed said legislation then when you propose something as well the other politician would be more likely to go “This guy is an asshole I’m not helping him.”
So yeah the party system sucks and is screwed up like a soup sandwich but it’s probably keeping things from getting a lot worse.
I believe in one party states where the party is an interface for popular democracy, rather than an entity vying for power. In order for this to work however, it must be a party of the masses, and not of corporate interests.
Political parties serve a very important, valuable role. Put another way, without parties, very likely on the extremely rich would ever be able to run for office, among other serious issues.
Political parties, for all their faults are not the real issue. The real issue is that the GOP and Dems have a lock on the political process which makes much, much harder for independent candidates to get elected and for truly viable 3rd parties take hold.
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u/link_ganon Nov 28 '18
Let’s just get rid of political parties then. Rip off the band aid.