9 ms·

The two biggest problems in US politics are the two-party system and unproprotional representation. I mean, even in European countries it's hard to say you sup

by shafyy 4y ago

The two biggest problems in US politics are the two-party system and unproprotional representation. I mean, even in European countries it's hard to say you support a specific party (e.g. the Greens in Germany), because you'll never agree with 100% of their politics. Just having two parties and needing to commit to one? That's fucking insane.

manholio 4y ago
The two party system is a direct result of the voting methods that are being used.
- jabl 4y ago
  Well, the two-party system is a result of having single-winner districts. Countries with multi-winner districts tend to be the ones were many parties are viable.
- crowbahr 4y ago
  In that the electoral college exists? Sure. In that if we did proportional voting different candidates would be elected? Probably. Then again somehow we managed to elect Eric Adams in NYC despite him being the worst option.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > we managed to elect Eric Adams in NYC despite him being the worst option “Worst” as in favoured by every borough except the Manhattan political elite, with “Garcia’s support [being] strongly correlated with median household income…she topped 40 percent in each of the city’s five wealthiest Assembly districts” [1]. (Disclaimer: I probably align with the Manhattan political elite.) [1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-eric-adams-won-the-new-york-city-mayoral-primary/amp/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-eric-adams-won-the-...
tootie 4y ago
But does multiparty actually result in better outcomes? It's not like any parliamentary country has such a rich array of options. I think most max out at 4 with right-leaning and left-leaning parties forming fragile coalitions that cost a huge amount of energy to negotiate. I think RCV is a net win and we actually did it for the mayoral primary here in NYC and I think it functioned well but the winner was still the most mild and obvious candidate. I think it will produce a very marginal benefit for voters.
- danuker 4y ago
  In Romania, the last election had a plurality. This resulted in politicians believing they need to listen to voters. That is, until the top 2 parties could form a majority coalition in spite of their ideologies being opposite on paper, so they can continue the degeneracy. I hope the next election leaves them with even less power.
  - tootie 4y ago
    America's most urgent problem isn't politicians failing to heed voters. It's what the voters are saying.
    - frankfrankfrank 4y ago
      It is interesting you say that, because the symptoms do not cause the disease. The problem always has been that the politicians have not heeded, let alone even represented the voters for a very long time now, hence why the voters who are the legitimate heirs are saying things you may not like. It essentially comes down to rather basic things, abuse, dishonesty, laziness, hedonism, etc. that has caused a perversion and Distortion of the whole system that means to maintain peace affairs among people through mutually agreed upon terms. Unfortunately those terms have been consistently, grotesquely, and deliberately violated for many decades now. It hasn’t even been Democracy, majority rule, for at least 60 years now; and democracy has also been perverted fundamentally by simply using psychological warfare techniques to gaslight the majority into self-sabotage.
jasode 4y ago
>The two biggest problems in US politics are the two-party system In terms of cause & effect, the USA's 2-party system is the effect caused by the voting system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law The game theory of voters not wanting to "waste their vote" on a marginal candidate -- and -- candidates naturally forming alliances and consolidating into fewer parties to have the best chance of attracting votes means.... the inevitable 2-party situation emerging organically.
- plsbenice34 4y ago
  Australia has a robust ranked voting system but still has very dominant 2 major parties. I think you're still correct but other factors can be powerful too. For example, people struggle to understand how ranked preferences work, so they are still irrationally afraid of 'wasting their vote' if they preference for a minor party that has no chance of winning. I suspect mandatory voting also encourages people that dont really care about politics (or understand ranked voting) to vote based on propaganda, reinforcing the major two parties.
  - conz 4y ago
    > Australia has a robust ranked voting system but still has very dominant 2 major parties. Australia's top 3 parties achieved ~65% of the vote. That leaves about 1/3rd to minor parties and independents. Surely that's a great deal better than having just 2 parties with any real power.
    - plsbenice34 4y ago
      The actual seats that are won are a better indication of the results and who has power. Results seem to be that the major 2 parties won 90% of the seats: https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal-election-2022-results https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal-election-2022-res...
      - gonzo41 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mattrighetti 4y ago
On the other hand you have European systems like the one in Italy where you have a lot of parties, all of which STILL not represent their voters and when they govern (together, mostly) they get nothing done because they don't agree on a single thing.
- cies 4y ago
  > they get nothing done That's not a bug, it's a feature. :)
  - logifail 4y ago
    > That's not a bug, it's a feature There are times when just leaving the status quo in place might well be the most desirable outcome for the majority of people, indeed deciding not to act is an option almost everywhere ... except in the voting booth. I repeatedly joke with my friends about how "the Belgian option" (a record 589 days without an elected government[0]) should be listed on every ballot paper. Musk was alluding to this with his recent tweet about Biden[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Belgian_government_formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Belgian_gove... [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1524883482836623373 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1524883482836623373
- japanuspus 4y ago
  Your wording seems to imply that the US system has a working parliament, which has clearly not been the case for the last couple of election cycles?
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  Here in the USA, many people I know (myself included) voted for Biden in hopes that less would "get done", because at least it would slow the damage that Trump and the GOP were doing to our world. I would much rather have a more progressive candidate like Bernie Sanders as a viable option, but he (and others) dropped out to support the most likely non-right-wing candidate (Biden); because that is the only option you have in a two party system.
cies 4y ago
> the two-party system The problem is thresholds. It's not inherently a 2-p system. The main thing to understand here is that the 2-p system works great for capitalists (= super rich). They can simply make contributions to and lobby both parties. Easy! > biggest problems in US politics What commoners see as a problem is a great feature for the capitalists. Another problem is with democracy: if you have a lot of uneducated voters that have their whole identity married with certain parties, or --even more common it seems-- hating "the other party", you will merely reduce the problems even with more parties to choose from. I'm not from the US, but after WMD-Bush, suveilance-drone-strike-Obama, pussy-grabber-Trump and demented-Biden I'd probably not be voting at all.
TheFreim 4y ago
I understand the concerns people have with a two-party system, but in practice I'm not sure that's what we have. Within each party there are a wide variety of subgroups. These subgroups have varying levels of influence generally and in different geographical regions. Take the republican party for example, inside it you can find both libertarians, paleo-conservatives, neo-conservatives, liberals, and others. What do you think?
- guerrilla 4y ago
  You definitely have a two party system. Countries with many parties also have factions like you describe within all their parties, so there's far more diversity than you see.
sampo 4y ago
> The two biggest problems in US politics are the two-party system and unproprotional representation. In my opinion, runoff voting, transfer voting, ranked-choice voting, are just small fixes that allow the occasional independent candidate to win over the candidates from the two major parties. But, as long as you only choose one candidate from an electoral district, I think the details of the voting system can only matter somewhat. For proportional representation and a multi-party system, you need to elect more than one candidate from an electoral district. At least 5 I think. 5 to 10. Only this way you allow for more that 2 viable political parties, that constantly get some candidates elected, that have viable party organizations and continuity. That are a constant part of the political debates. A two-party system where some outsiders, independent candidates occasionally get elected, is still a two-party system.
- spaetzleesser 4y ago
  "For proportional representation and a multi-party system, you need to elect more than one candidate from an electoral district. At least 5 I think. 5 to 10." You can apply the proportional factor to a state or the whole country.
- hospadar 4y ago
  See also: https://thirty-thousand.org/ https://thirty-thousand.org/ General idea being to massively increase the number of reps (presumably adding much more diversity of opinion and nuance to congress). Not specifically about RCV, but lots of great thoughts about how congress might be different. My personal hot take is that RCV + a "maximum citizens per rep" rule would do a lot of good things for congress (and probably weaken the 2-party stranglehold even if it didn't destroy it).
- bo1024 4y ago
  I agree on the benefits of multiple candidates, but you might be underestimating the possibility of long-term change in the two-party structure due to ranked choice voting. It allows third parties to slowly gain voteshare, power, and influence over time, because in each election, people can express those preferences without worrying about throwing away their votes. I'm not guaranteeing that would happen, but I think it's a likely benefit.
oceanplexian 4y ago
I don’t really agree that the problem with politics is that the system is broken. The US has done some incredible things in the last few hundred years within the bounds of our political system, which, to be honest is much older and more proven than the systems of government in Germany and most European counties Post-WWII. The problem is that we don’t have our best people running for office, we have our worst, because of institutions like the Media and Academia, which have been taken over by a vocal, loud minority and have been weaponized to push politics.
- resoluteteeth 4y ago
  US revolutionary era propaganda such as Common Sense aside, the UK's parliamentary system was effectively a modern democracy before the US even existed, so if anything parliamentary systems are older and more tested. Just because the US has accomplished things in other areas doesn't mean its political system is automatically good. Additionally, the US political system strongly encourages appeals to vocal minorities based on the way primaries interact with the two party system, so to blame this on vocal groups and say it's not the fault of the political system is backwards.
  - qwytw 4y ago
    > UK's parliamentary system was effectively a modern democracy It objectively wasn't, especially untill the Reform Act 1832 removed the rotten buroughs. In 1780 less than 3% of all people living England had the right to vote and that had only increased to ~15% by 186. Even universal suffrage for men was only introduced in 1918, while at least almost all white men had the right to vote in the US by the 1850's.
- Symmetry 4y ago
  For most of US history the parties were ideologically and geographically mixed and mostly competing over political patronage rather than ideology with one party typically having a northern conservative and southern liberal wing and the other party the opposite. This continued until the progressive era with the brief exception of the 1854-1860 period. With various progressive reforms around the turn of the 20th century pork became much less of an issue but the parties still remained very ideologically mixed and that only started to change in the 1970s with Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and the rise of open primaries. Since then Republicans and Democrats have become more and more ideologically distinct with the most conservative Democrat being more liberal than the most liberal Republican, a situation the US has never experienced before for any length of time. Given that the US is a big outlier in how long we've managed to keep a presidential system (as opposed to parliamentary) without a breakdown of democracy this is a somewhat worrying development. EDIT: I use "liberal" and "conservative" above but Back In the Day it was the party that thought that all white people were equal versus the party that thought that all protestants were equal most of the time so that gets a little blurred.
rowanG077 4y ago
I always take one of these questionnaire that tells you which party you agree with most. The top spots is only 50-55% overlap. And that's in a country with many parties.
TheCondor 4y ago
What’s insane is the absolute loyalty people give the two parties. They are relatively dynamic and change their platforms over time (it’s quite shocking to compare Goldwater to Reagan to Trump) The nearly blind loyalty people give their parties, even when they are actively not pursuing their interests is crazy.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  This doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the cult of personalities the politicians themselves gain. If I ever proudly fly a flag with another man’s name on it, someone go ahead and stage a hunting accident.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
belorn 4y ago
European countries uses degressive proportionality in the European Parliament. I also don't know a single European country that uses strict proportional representation even in local elections. Maybe Switzerland?
- lambertsimnel 4y ago
  Doesn't the system used for parliamentary elections in the Netherlands count as strict proportional representation? (It has a single nationwide constituency, no formal threshold, and an effective threshold of less than one percent.) I believe Slovakia and much of the former Yugoslavia also use at-large (and therefore not degressive) PR for their general elections.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by shafyy 4y ago

manholio 4y ago

The two party system is a direct result of the voting methods that are being used.

jabl 4y ago
Well, the two-party system is a result of having single-winner districts. Countries with multi-winner districts tend to be the ones were many parties are viable.
crowbahr 4y ago
In that the electoral college exists? Sure. In that if we did proportional voting different candidates would be elected? Probably. Then again somehow we managed to elect Eric Adams in NYC despite him being the worst option.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > we managed to elect Eric Adams in NYC despite him being the worst option “Worst” as in favoured by every borough except the Manhattan political elite, with “Garcia’s support [being] strongly correlated with median household income…she topped 40 percent in each of the city’s five wealthiest Assembly districts” [1]. (Disclaimer: I probably align with the Manhattan political elite.) [1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-eric-adams-won-the-new-york-city-mayoral-primary/amp/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-eric-adams-won-the-...

tootie 4y ago

But does multiparty actually result in better outcomes? It's not like any parliamentary country has such a rich array of options. I think most max out at 4 with right-leaning and left-leaning parties forming fragile coalitions that cost a huge amount of energy to negotiate. I think RCV is a net win and we actually did it for the mayoral primary here in NYC and I think it functioned well but the winner was still the most mild and obvious candidate. I think it will produce a very marginal benefit for voters.

danuker 4y ago
In Romania, the last election had a plurality. This resulted in politicians believing they need to listen to voters. That is, until the top 2 parties could form a majority coalition in spite of their ideologies being opposite on paper, so they can continue the degeneracy. I hope the next election leaves them with even less power.
- tootie 4y ago
  America's most urgent problem isn't politicians failing to heed voters. It's what the voters are saying.
  - frankfrankfrank 4y ago
    It is interesting you say that, because the symptoms do not cause the disease. The problem always has been that the politicians have not heeded, let alone even represented the voters for a very long time now, hence why the voters who are the legitimate heirs are saying things you may not like. It essentially comes down to rather basic things, abuse, dishonesty, laziness, hedonism, etc. that has caused a perversion and Distortion of the whole system that means to maintain peace affairs among people through mutually agreed upon terms. Unfortunately those terms have been consistently, grotesquely, and deliberately violated for many decades now. It hasn’t even been Democracy, majority rule, for at least 60 years now; and democracy has also been perverted fundamentally by simply using psychological warfare techniques to gaslight the majority into self-sabotage.

jasode 4y ago

>The two biggest problems in US politics are the two-party system In terms of cause & effect, the USA's 2-party system is the effect caused by the voting system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law The game theory of voters not wanting to "waste their vote" on a marginal candidate -- and -- candidates naturally forming alliances and consolidating into fewer parties to have the best chance of attracting votes means.... the inevitable 2-party situation emerging organically.

plsbenice34 4y ago
Australia has a robust ranked voting system but still has very dominant 2 major parties. I think you're still correct but other factors can be powerful too. For example, people struggle to understand how ranked preferences work, so they are still irrationally afraid of 'wasting their vote' if they preference for a minor party that has no chance of winning. I suspect mandatory voting also encourages people that dont really care about politics (or understand ranked voting) to vote based on propaganda, reinforcing the major two parties.
- conz 4y ago
  > Australia has a robust ranked voting system but still has very dominant 2 major parties. Australia's top 3 parties achieved ~65% of the vote. That leaves about 1/3rd to minor parties and independents. Surely that's a great deal better than having just 2 parties with any real power.
  - plsbenice34 4y ago
    The actual seats that are won are a better indication of the results and who has power. Results seem to be that the major 2 parties won 90% of the seats: https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal-election-2022-results https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal-election-2022-res...
    - gonzo41 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mattrighetti 4y ago

On the other hand you have European systems like the one in Italy where you have a lot of parties, all of which STILL not represent their voters and when they govern (together, mostly) they get nothing done because they don't agree on a single thing.

cies 4y ago
> they get nothing done That's not a bug, it's a feature. :)
- logifail 4y ago
  > That's not a bug, it's a feature There are times when just leaving the status quo in place might well be the most desirable outcome for the majority of people, indeed deciding not to act is an option almost everywhere ... except in the voting booth. I repeatedly joke with my friends about how "the Belgian option" (a record 589 days without an elected government[0]) should be listed on every ballot paper. Musk was alluding to this with his recent tweet about Biden[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Belgian_government_formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Belgian_gove... [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1524883482836623373 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1524883482836623373
japanuspus 4y ago
Your wording seems to imply that the US system has a working parliament, which has clearly not been the case for the last couple of election cycles?
thomastjeffery 4y ago
Here in the USA, many people I know (myself included) voted for Biden in hopes that less would "get done", because at least it would slow the damage that Trump and the GOP were doing to our world. I would much rather have a more progressive candidate like Bernie Sanders as a viable option, but he (and others) dropped out to support the most likely non-right-wing candidate (Biden); because that is the only option you have in a two party system.

cies 4y ago

> the two-party system The problem is thresholds. It's not inherently a 2-p system. The main thing to understand here is that the 2-p system works great for capitalists (= super rich). They can simply make contributions to and lobby both parties. Easy! > biggest problems in US politics What commoners see as a problem is a great feature for the capitalists. Another problem is with democracy: if you have a lot of uneducated voters that have their whole identity married with certain parties, or --even more common it seems-- hating "the other party", you will merely reduce the problems even with more parties to choose from. I'm not from the US, but after WMD-Bush, suveilance-drone-strike-Obama, pussy-grabber-Trump and demented-Biden I'd probably not be voting at all.

TheFreim 4y ago

I understand the concerns people have with a two-party system, but in practice I'm not sure that's what we have. Within each party there are a wide variety of subgroups. These subgroups have varying levels of influence generally and in different geographical regions. Take the republican party for example, inside it you can find both libertarians, paleo-conservatives, neo-conservatives, liberals, and others. What do you think?

guerrilla 4y ago
You definitely have a two party system. Countries with many parties also have factions like you describe within all their parties, so there's far more diversity than you see.

sampo 4y ago

> The two biggest problems in US politics are the two-party system and unproprotional representation. In my opinion, runoff voting, transfer voting, ranked-choice voting, are just small fixes that allow the occasional independent candidate to win over the candidates from the two major parties. But, as long as you only choose one candidate from an electoral district, I think the details of the voting system can only matter somewhat. For proportional representation and a multi-party system, you need to elect more than one candidate from an electoral district. At least 5 I think. 5 to 10. Only this way you allow for more that 2 viable political parties, that constantly get some candidates elected, that have viable party organizations and continuity. That are a constant part of the political debates. A two-party system where some outsiders, independent candidates occasionally get elected, is still a two-party system.

spaetzleesser 4y ago
"For proportional representation and a multi-party system, you need to elect more than one candidate from an electoral district. At least 5 I think. 5 to 10." You can apply the proportional factor to a state or the whole country.
hospadar 4y ago
See also: https://thirty-thousand.org/ https://thirty-thousand.org/ General idea being to massively increase the number of reps (presumably adding much more diversity of opinion and nuance to congress). Not specifically about RCV, but lots of great thoughts about how congress might be different. My personal hot take is that RCV + a "maximum citizens per rep" rule would do a lot of good things for congress (and probably weaken the 2-party stranglehold even if it didn't destroy it).
bo1024 4y ago
I agree on the benefits of multiple candidates, but you might be underestimating the possibility of long-term change in the two-party structure due to ranked choice voting. It allows third parties to slowly gain voteshare, power, and influence over time, because in each election, people can express those preferences without worrying about throwing away their votes. I'm not guaranteeing that would happen, but I think it's a likely benefit.

oceanplexian 4y ago

I don’t really agree that the problem with politics is that the system is broken. The US has done some incredible things in the last few hundred years within the bounds of our political system, which, to be honest is much older and more proven than the systems of government in Germany and most European counties Post-WWII. The problem is that we don’t have our best people running for office, we have our worst, because of institutions like the Media and Academia, which have been taken over by a vocal, loud minority and have been weaponized to push politics.

resoluteteeth 4y ago
US revolutionary era propaganda such as Common Sense aside, the UK's parliamentary system was effectively a modern democracy before the US even existed, so if anything parliamentary systems are older and more tested. Just because the US has accomplished things in other areas doesn't mean its political system is automatically good. Additionally, the US political system strongly encourages appeals to vocal minorities based on the way primaries interact with the two party system, so to blame this on vocal groups and say it's not the fault of the political system is backwards.
- qwytw 4y ago
  > UK's parliamentary system was effectively a modern democracy It objectively wasn't, especially untill the Reform Act 1832 removed the rotten buroughs. In 1780 less than 3% of all people living England had the right to vote and that had only increased to ~15% by 186. Even universal suffrage for men was only introduced in 1918, while at least almost all white men had the right to vote in the US by the 1850's.
Symmetry 4y ago
For most of US history the parties were ideologically and geographically mixed and mostly competing over political patronage rather than ideology with one party typically having a northern conservative and southern liberal wing and the other party the opposite. This continued until the progressive era with the brief exception of the 1854-1860 period. With various progressive reforms around the turn of the 20th century pork became much less of an issue but the parties still remained very ideologically mixed and that only started to change in the 1970s with Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and the rise of open primaries. Since then Republicans and Democrats have become more and more ideologically distinct with the most conservative Democrat being more liberal than the most liberal Republican, a situation the US has never experienced before for any length of time. Given that the US is a big outlier in how long we've managed to keep a presidential system (as opposed to parliamentary) without a breakdown of democracy this is a somewhat worrying development. EDIT: I use "liberal" and "conservative" above but Back In the Day it was the party that thought that all white people were equal versus the party that thought that all protestants were equal most of the time so that gets a little blurred.

rowanG077 4y ago

I always take one of these questionnaire that tells you which party you agree with most. The top spots is only 50-55% overlap. And that's in a country with many parties.

TheCondor 4y ago

What’s insane is the absolute loyalty people give the two parties. They are relatively dynamic and change their platforms over time (it’s quite shocking to compare Goldwater to Reagan to Trump) The nearly blind loyalty people give their parties, even when they are actively not pursuing their interests is crazy.

the_only_law 4y ago
This doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the cult of personalities the politicians themselves gain. If I ever proudly fly a flag with another man’s name on it, someone go ahead and stage a hunting accident.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

belorn 4y ago

European countries uses degressive proportionality in the European Parliament. I also don't know a single European country that uses strict proportional representation even in local elections. Maybe Switzerland?

lambertsimnel 4y ago
Doesn't the system used for parliamentary elections in the Netherlands count as strict proportional representation? (It has a single nationwide constituency, no formal threshold, and an effective threshold of less than one percent.) I believe Slovakia and much of the former Yugoslavia also use at-large (and therefore not degressive) PR for their general elections.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]