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there is a very good reason that nobody looks at a third party candidate: it would be foolish to vote for them, no matter how closely your views might align to

there is a very good reason that nobody looks at a third party candidate: it would be foolish to vote for them, no matter how closely your views might align to them. Assuming you had any preference at all of which of the major parties get in, by voting for a third party instead of one of them, you in fact increase the chance the other will win. This is a fundamental issue of this kind of voting system, and there are many alternate systems that do not have this crippling, paralysing flaw. For example, look at many northern european democracies, which have ranked choice or proportional votes, and sure enough they often have several-way coalitions of much more reprasentative parties governing them

6510 4y ago
Coalitions are not needed. Politicians, regardless of their personal agenda, are interested in what the voters want. They might not agree with it, they might not do what the people want, they are always interested. The other candidates, however small, provide valuable insights to them. It shows how far they can push their own agenda. People can display their self-less submission by voting for the top 2 candidates regardless what they represent. It sends a strong signal that they can do whatever they want. All countries get a bunch of stuff right and makes a spectacular mess from other things. Each of those spectacles should have one or more dedicated candidates and people who are sick and tired of it should vote for such candidate. The agenda, most of the time, can be a summary of examples of other [western] countries getting it right. While original ideas are definitely possible you can have countless [shall we say] boring topics that are absolutely worth representing. Such party may draw an utopian or extreme picture, it may even be unrealistic. If people vote for it it will eventually send a message to those politicians who always win the election each and every time. In turn they can propose or implement a trimmed down / mild version of it or explain why they are against it. There might be truly silly ideas worth investigating but the winning candidate cant spend his finite time in office addressing the silly things. Unless there is a significant number of people who don't think it is silly at all. The only chance for such a party to win is if the issue is ignored or escalated to the point everyone is fed up with it. Long before that one of the bigger candidates will absorb that juicy bag of votes. Its a slow process but it works.
guerrilla 4y ago
> Assuming you had any preference at all of which of the major parties get in, by voting for a third party instead of one of them, you in fact increase the chance the other will win You need to use Esperanto contracts. When Esperanto was new, what they did is had this chain letter (or something?) where they said "If 1000 people agree to learn this language, will you also learn it?" and then they collected signatures and once they had gotten 1000 (or whatever the number was) then many of the people actually learned it...
cestith 4y ago
https://www.starvoting.us/ https://www.starvoting.us/ is much more straightforward to introduce given existing voting infrastructure than RCV.

6510 4y ago

Coalitions are not needed. Politicians, regardless of their personal agenda, are interested in what the voters want. They might not agree with it, they might not do what the people want, they are always interested. The other candidates, however small, provide valuable insights to them. It shows how far they can push their own agenda. People can display their self-less submission by voting for the top 2 candidates regardless what they represent. It sends a strong signal that they can do whatever they want. All countries get a bunch of stuff right and makes a spectacular mess from other things. Each of those spectacles should have one or more dedicated candidates and people who are sick and tired of it should vote for such candidate. The agenda, most of the time, can be a summary of examples of other [western] countries getting it right. While original ideas are definitely possible you can have countless [shall we say] boring topics that are absolutely worth representing. Such party may draw an utopian or extreme picture, it may even be unrealistic. If people vote for it it will eventually send a message to those politicians who always win the election each and every time. In turn they can propose or implement a trimmed down / mild version of it or explain why they are against it. There might be truly silly ideas worth investigating but the winning candidate cant spend his finite time in office addressing the silly things. Unless there is a significant number of people who don't think it is silly at all. The only chance for such a party to win is if the issue is ignored or escalated to the point everyone is fed up with it. Long before that one of the bigger candidates will absorb that juicy bag of votes. Its a slow process but it works.

guerrilla 4y ago

> Assuming you had any preference at all of which of the major parties get in, by voting for a third party instead of one of them, you in fact increase the chance the other will win You need to use Esperanto contracts. When Esperanto was new, what they did is had this chain letter (or something?) where they said "If 1000 people agree to learn this language, will you also learn it?" and then they collected signatures and once they had gotten 1000 (or whatever the number was) then many of the people actually learned it...

cestith 4y ago

https://www.starvoting.us/ https://www.starvoting.us/ is much more straightforward to introduce given existing voting infrastructure than RCV.