7 ms·

This would have been the perfect election to have a third alternative. But unfortunately, the american political system is not made for this. Time for change?

by mtw 10y ago

merpnderp 10y ago
But which party is going to spearhead allowing for more party choice?
knz 10y ago
I don't disagree but I do wonder what that would even look like. Do we need to change the system? The players/politicians? Groups exerting influence onto the system (the media, big business, big unions)? Push more decisions to the State level? Good luck untangling that mess... we can't even agree to end crap like gerrymandering and voter suppression.
wrsh07 10y ago
There's a "law" that describes this: Duverger's Law [1] Pedantry follows: First past the post is [more or less] the election system we have - you select one candidate. Candidate with plurality [that's a generalization of a majority, ie the person with the most votes even if they don't have > 50%] wins. There are lots of alternatives, and even a ballot initiative in Maine [2] to switch to a different type of voting system known as Ranked Choice Voting. New types of voting systems are exciting, but complexity lends itself to a poor user interface. So more sophisticated forms of voting actually depress poll #s [I'll just cite Harry talking about this ballot initiative in this podcast [3]]. If you're looking to ever have a real alternative to the big two, the path to that is convincing your local government to switch voting systems. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law [2]: https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative,_Question_5_(2016) https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiativ... [3]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/elections-podcast-countdown-11-days/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/elections-podcast-countd... [Edit: put scare quotes around law]
- abecedarius 10y ago
  The issue of complexity is why I'd push for approval voting (i.e. you can upvote multiple candidates). http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ shows some of the weirdness that comes up with ranked choice voting (what I'd always heard of before as instant runoff voting). It looks even more surprising than what we have! I've been wondering recently if California would go for a ballot initiative to change their primaries to approval voting or score voting or some other reasonable improvement. Since recently the state has open primaries, meaning you might end up with a general election between two Democrats, or two Republicans, and other weirdness. I can imagine less resistance to a change here, than for the mechanism of the general election.
  - wrsh07 10y ago
    Majority judgment or judgment voting is interesting / more general than merely up vote + down vote. I think the most important thing is for voters to want to experiment. And to be engaged.
- perilunar 10y ago
  In Australia we use Preferential or Optional Preferential voting (aka Instant Runoff) for pretty much all elections (federal, state and local), and it works reasonably well. First-past-the-post voting seems like a completely backward way to vote, and perfectly designed to make voting for a third party candidate a difficult choice.
- acedinlowball 10y ago
  Also known as First Past the Post.
  - wrsh07 10y ago
    Yes, I even named it in my post
jmcphers 10y ago
Currently we have two candidates, who are each more or less reviled by at least 50% of the population. Would it really be better to have three candidates, each of which was more or less reviled by 66% of the population? The truth is that Americans don't agree on many major issues, and that the major parties are a personification of this unhappy fact. Adding more parties doesn't help that. In fact, splitting the vote among more parties makes it likely that the elected official will represent the views of fewer of the total electorate!
- krapp 10y ago
  > In fact, splitting the vote among more parties makes it likely that the elected official will represent the views of fewer of the total electorate! The obvious answer to this is to dismantle the Federal system, devolve as much power as possible to the states, and perhaps abolish the office of President altogether. It would probably be a terrible idea on the one hand, but on the other hand, no more Presidential elections.
CalChris 10y ago
I've often wished to be on the other side of the fence with a proportionally representing parliament. You can take a look at other parliamentary systems in the world and it's not markedly better or worse. There are other structural changes I'd make first (direct Presidential election, ...).

This would have been the perfect election to have a third alternative. But unfortunately, the american political system is not made for this. Time for change?

by mtw 10y ago

This would have been the perfect election to have a third alternative. But unfortunately, the american political system is not made for this. Time for change?

merpnderp 10y ago

But which party is going to spearhead allowing for more party choice?

knz 10y ago

I don't disagree but I do wonder what that would even look like. Do we need to change the system? The players/politicians? Groups exerting influence onto the system (the media, big business, big unions)? Push more decisions to the State level? Good luck untangling that mess... we can't even agree to end crap like gerrymandering and voter suppression.

wrsh07 10y ago

There's a "law" that describes this: Duverger's Law [1] Pedantry follows: First past the post is [more or less] the election system we have - you select one candidate. Candidate with plurality [that's a generalization of a majority, ie the person with the most votes even if they don't have > 50%] wins. There are lots of alternatives, and even a ballot initiative in Maine [2] to switch to a different type of voting system known as Ranked Choice Voting. New types of voting systems are exciting, but complexity lends itself to a poor user interface. So more sophisticated forms of voting actually depress poll #s [I'll just cite Harry talking about this ballot initiative in this podcast [3]]. If you're looking to ever have a real alternative to the big two, the path to that is convincing your local government to switch voting systems. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law [2]: https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative,_Question_5_(2016) https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiativ... [3]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/elections-podcast-countdown-11-days/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/elections-podcast-countd... [Edit: put scare quotes around law]

abecedarius 10y ago
The issue of complexity is why I'd push for approval voting (i.e. you can upvote multiple candidates). http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ shows some of the weirdness that comes up with ranked choice voting (what I'd always heard of before as instant runoff voting). It looks even more surprising than what we have! I've been wondering recently if California would go for a ballot initiative to change their primaries to approval voting or score voting or some other reasonable improvement. Since recently the state has open primaries, meaning you might end up with a general election between two Democrats, or two Republicans, and other weirdness. I can imagine less resistance to a change here, than for the mechanism of the general election.
- wrsh07 10y ago
  Majority judgment or judgment voting is interesting / more general than merely up vote + down vote. I think the most important thing is for voters to want to experiment. And to be engaged.
perilunar 10y ago
In Australia we use Preferential or Optional Preferential voting (aka Instant Runoff) for pretty much all elections (federal, state and local), and it works reasonably well. First-past-the-post voting seems like a completely backward way to vote, and perfectly designed to make voting for a third party candidate a difficult choice.
acedinlowball 10y ago
Also known as First Past the Post.
- wrsh07 10y ago
  Yes, I even named it in my post

jmcphers 10y ago

Currently we have two candidates, who are each more or less reviled by at least 50% of the population. Would it really be better to have three candidates, each of which was more or less reviled by 66% of the population? The truth is that Americans don't agree on many major issues, and that the major parties are a personification of this unhappy fact. Adding more parties doesn't help that. In fact, splitting the vote among more parties makes it likely that the elected official will represent the views of fewer of the total electorate!

krapp 10y ago
> In fact, splitting the vote among more parties makes it likely that the elected official will represent the views of fewer of the total electorate! The obvious answer to this is to dismantle the Federal system, devolve as much power as possible to the states, and perhaps abolish the office of President altogether. It would probably be a terrible idea on the one hand, but on the other hand, no more Presidential elections.

CalChris 10y ago

I've often wished to be on the other side of the fence with a proportionally representing parliament. You can take a look at other parliamentary systems in the world and it's not markedly better or worse. There are other structural changes I'd make first (direct Presidential election, ...).