A two party system is an inescapable consequence of the plurality voting system (aka first-past-the-post voting) which is the system used by nearly all states and districts in the US, and much of the rest of the world. To fix the two party problem, the first step is to change the voting system. There are a number of alternative voting systems, each with their own pros and cons and situational uses. For legislative bodies, boards, or any other elected committee, I'm partial to proportional voting. And for single seat elections, I think approval voting is the ideal.
The thing that makes approval voting and other single seat voting systems better than plurality is that you vote for everyone you like. The way that that vote is cast and counted differs between systems. But in all cases, the benefit, ideally, is when 3 or more candidates exist for a seat, it prevents the least popular candidate from winning just because the other more popular candidates split the opposing voters. If you vote for each candidate you like, the candidates are never splitting the votes. The funny thing to me about most of these other fairer voting systems is that, while they are susceptible to a sort of spoiler effect from overly strategic or cynical voters who will simply only support one candidate, the result of that is just plurality voting, which we already have now. In other words, our current system is the worst case scenario for other, better, voting systems.
Some good videos on these systems...
CGP Grey video series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLej2SlXPEd37YwwEY7mm0WyZ8cfB1TxXa&si=drEjNlgriHGg8feS
Primer video: https://youtu.be/yhO6jfHPFQU?si=IZNs8AAp3Xlif23X
plurality voting system (aka first-past-the-post voting) which is the system used by... much of the rest of the world
Is this accurate? My understanding is that at least in Europe, it is only the UK and Belarus that use first-past-the-post; everywhere else uses some form of proportional voting.
It's not the majority of the world, but there are a few dozen countries that primarily use FPTP. It's used in North America, Europe, Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and a bunch of Pacific island nations. Belarus and the UK appear to be the only European nations to do so though, yes.
Here's a map of the counties that primarily use FPTP: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#/media/File%3ACountries_That_Use_a_First_Past_the_Post_Voting_System.png
Also proportional voting is only used for groups of elected seats, not single winner elections.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/playlist?list=PLej2SlXPEd37YwwEY7mm0WyZ8cfB1TxXa&si=drEjNlgriHGg8feS
https://piped.video/yhO6jfHPFQU?si=IZNs8AAp3Xlif23X
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The solution to single seat elections is.. more seats 😛
Great! Now any idea what we can do to make this a reality?
State election reforms to ranked choice voting have already started some places. Alaska, Hawaii and Maine all use it for some state elections. Some other states use it in some local jurisdictions. Of course, several backwards states have outlawed Ranked Choice altogether. Once it's used widely enough and been demonstrated to work well, that makes it easier to get it on a ballot at the federal level.
What can you do personally? Advocate for it where relevant, contact your representatives and let them know it's important to you, and vote for it if given the chance.
Shouldn't it be the son saying that?
The little shit needed to hear this sooner or later. It's crazy how many people still feel like it is.
I've recently been a vocal proponent of rank choice voting. I literally haven't seen any cons to it, and I think it's the only chance of ever getting a 3rd party in the office, which I want SO BADLY
It's not a "con" per se, but because ranked choice/instant runoff eliminates a candidate in each round, it can result in a similar effect where a new candidate further to the left or right of the otherwise most popular candidate can actually result in them being eliminated and the least popular candidate winning as a result. It's called the "center squeeze" effect. It's issue that already exists with plurality voting, "the spoiler effect", but to a lesser capacity, so it's definitely an improvement. But it's still a problem when two similar candidates run at once.
I prefer approval voting because so long as everyone votes honestly, no candidate entering the race can spoil the results for the other candidates except to be more popular and win. With approval, you cast one vote to every candidate who you would approve of at all for the office, and rhe winner is the one who is approved by the most. There is the potentiality for issues there too, but only from some voters being being overly strategic and harming their own interests as a result. There's no downside to voting honestly in approval voting systems.
Regardless, both systems are objectively better than plurality. What's more, the absolute worse case scenario for overly strategic voting both systems is that everyone only votes for one candidate... which is just plurality voting. That means the absolute shittiest outcome for either system is... the system nearly everyone already uses now.
so long as everyone votes honestly
That's a big ask. If I think the vote will probably end up between two candidates I would be fine with winning, I am incentivized to only list the one I prefer. Likewise, if I think the vote will end up going to one of two candidates I would generally not be fine with winning, I am incentivized to list the one I perceive as the lesser evil regardless of my true preferences.
In the end, approval voting comes down to ranked choice voting, but instead of giving ranks you pick a rank threshold where everything above that rank is approved and everything below disapproved. The choice of that threshold is very vulnerable to strategic voting.
I do agree with you that it's in most cases a better system than plurality though. Even if you strategically lower your threshold to put a lesser-evil type choice as your lowest accepted rank, you do still hand in an approval vote for every candidate above that one. Vice versa with disapproval and strategically raising the threshold.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/yhO6jfHPFQU?si=bclD7t8BqWzlz1Ne
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I dont wanna type a long reply, but IMHO the easiest way to get a 3rd party in the US is:
- Run a 3rd party in the few states with RCV for House seats (Maine, Alaska). Promise to caucus with whichever party would otherwise win the seats there on important issues. Currently that would give you 3 reps iirc.
- Cross your fingers and hope for a divided house.
- This tiny party would now be a kingmaker. It could make legislation aiding PR/RCV the primary condition of its support. Namely repealing the Uniform congressional districts act which currently prevetns any state from adopting PR.
- IDK what to do about the senate
It doesn't get too much better if you just add more parties. What you need is a robust protection against corruption.
Corruption is indeed one of the biggest problems in modern democracies, specially in the US. But corruption aside, the two party system is still a huge burden for the US democracy. The variety of opinions in society is huge and two parties could never represent that. You're either for something, or against. In every political matter! In a multiple party system however, a party can side with party A on an economical matters and side with party B on infrastructural matter. A process like that eventually leads to better democratic compromises.
Or at least a 100% tax fee.
Wake up? More like woke up!
He's now.
