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Or voters should take some civic responsibility and stop voting for corrupt politicians. Americans seem to be either unable to make their own decisions without

Or voters should take some civic responsibility and stop voting for corrupt politicians. Americans seem to be either unable to make their own decisions without paid advertising to direct them or they're afraid of "wasting" their vote on candidates that didn't spend enough on advertising.

mptest 1y ago
this is just a more abstract "bootstraps" argument. schooling in this country has been systematically attacked and deconstructed, and as the burger reich's leader says, "i love the poorly educated". this is not "dum timmy votes for dum thing" it's "countless $ and effort and man hours have been devoted to making the american populace dumber" Why? look at any polling breakdown for how the educated vote vs the uneducated.
whoooboyy 1y ago
Try telling people you voted third party because of a deeply held conviction about not electing corrupt politicians. You will be told you are evil, that you've got an unreasonable/impossible purity bar, that you don't really believe in that deeply held moral conviction actually, that you are worse than the people who voted for the other guy, that you are a utopian idealist, etc etc. Don't get me wrong, I did vote third party and I will continue to do so if the Dems put up candidates like Harris and Biden. But don't expect most people to be willing to weather the storm of vitriol they'll receive for holding a high bar for their politicians.
- petralithic 1y ago
  It's more that voting third party in a first-past-the-post voting scheme is systemically pointless.
  - whoooboyy 1y ago
    Parent poster said to stop voting for bad candidates. I said you would be mocked/judged/told off for doing so. And here we are.
    - EraYaN 1y ago
      Well you should mostly do that in the primaries, when you are down to two, pick the least evil one.
    - petralithic 1y ago
      What I said is factually true, neither mocking, judging nor telling you off. If you believe saying something like, don't look at the sun or you'll hurt your eyes (and then you look at the sun and say that your eyes are burnt) is telling you off, then we have different definitions of the phrase.
  - onraglanroad 1y ago
    It obviously isn't since the UK, for example, has fptp for general elections and far more than two parties.
    - petralithic 1y ago
      Parliamentary systems are not comparable to presidential ones when it comes to voting systems.
- ethin 1y ago
  This problem is only magnified when you consider our voting system. Any ranked voting system inherently runs into Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which makes what we have right now not exactly democratic. The solution would be to switch to something like approval voting but good luck getting that going.
  - mindslight 1y ago
    It's been a while since I've studied the details of voting systems, but it seems like Approval voting just moves the spoiler effect into how people vote - ie strategic voting. Personally I think the possibilities of circular ties under Ranked Pairs is oversold. Society is well acquainted with the concept of a tie, and whatever tiebreaker procedure we define probably won't factor into voter strategy all that much (that is, it will be less of an effect than the people who don't understand they can vote for more than one candidate)
    - ClayShentrup 1y ago
      > it seems like Approval voting just moves the spoiler effect into how people vote that's orthogonal. ranked voting methods already have (arguably more severe) response to strategic voting AND ALSO can fail IIA even with no strategy applied, just by changing an irrelevant alternative. > Personally I think the possibilities of circular ties under Ranked Pairs is oversold. what does that even mean? we have VSE figures that measure the combined effect of all failures, including when the Condorcet winner isn't the favorite candidate of the electorate (not the social utility maximizer). https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse-graph.html https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse-graph.html that's not under or oversold, it's just measured performance.
      - mindslight 1y ago
        Restating my disclaimer of "It's been a while since I've studied the details of voting systems"... > ranked voting methods ... can fail IIA even with no strategy applied, just by changing an irrelevant alternative. Can you clarify whether you're referring to some ranked methods (eg IRV), or all ranked methods (ie including ranked pairs) ? > that's not under or oversold, it's just measured performance. Isn't this due to defining "performance" in a way that is congruent with Approval (/ Score) ? A quick skim of that VSE page has it talking about "utility", which I would imagine is a scalar per candidate representing "happiness" ? The problem I have with Approval is that coming from our two-terrible-party system - do I Approve my latent terrible party or not? That choice seems purely down to strategy, compared to being able to rank them to say I completely prefer the new party/candidate over my latent terrible party, and my latent terrible party over the other latent terrible party. The dynamic also seems exacerbated knowing there will be a lot of people who continue to vote exactly as they did under plurality.
toolazytologin 1y ago
Or “politics” are too much of their identity and they always vote for “their guy” regardless of the merits. Education does not matter when the vote has nothing to so with rationality and is only rooting for a team. Corruption will never be solved. It could possibly be reduced if there was less ROI. I expect that would require shrinking the government so there is less centralized power. A limited federal government and more administrative power handed back to the states (within reason) would be interesting.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Too many people treat politics like sports fandom. I know people whose political views are the exact opposite of Party X, but if you ask them, they will tell you they will always vote for Party X, because they were born and raised an X, and stick by their team no matter what they do. They're like fucking Eagles fans. They have this weird "team loyalty" that I just don't get.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    > Too many people treat politics like sports fandom. I know people whose political views are the exact opposite of Party X, but if you ask them, they will tell you they will always vote for Party X, because they were born and raised an X, and stick by their team no matter what they do. This part makes enough sense. > They're like fucking Eagles fans. Now you've gone and implied 95% of sports fans aren't that way?? I don't understand your argument any more.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      Haha every Eagles fan I know is ride or die.

mptest 1y ago

this is just a more abstract "bootstraps" argument. schooling in this country has been systematically attacked and deconstructed, and as the burger reich's leader says, "i love the poorly educated". this is not "dum timmy votes for dum thing" it's "countless $ and effort and man hours have been devoted to making the american populace dumber" Why? look at any polling breakdown for how the educated vote vs the uneducated.

whoooboyy 1y ago

Try telling people you voted third party because of a deeply held conviction about not electing corrupt politicians. You will be told you are evil, that you've got an unreasonable/impossible purity bar, that you don't really believe in that deeply held moral conviction actually, that you are worse than the people who voted for the other guy, that you are a utopian idealist, etc etc. Don't get me wrong, I did vote third party and I will continue to do so if the Dems put up candidates like Harris and Biden. But don't expect most people to be willing to weather the storm of vitriol they'll receive for holding a high bar for their politicians.

petralithic 1y ago
It's more that voting third party in a first-past-the-post voting scheme is systemically pointless.
- whoooboyy 1y ago
  Parent poster said to stop voting for bad candidates. I said you would be mocked/judged/told off for doing so. And here we are.
  - EraYaN 1y ago
    Well you should mostly do that in the primaries, when you are down to two, pick the least evil one.
  - petralithic 1y ago
    What I said is factually true, neither mocking, judging nor telling you off. If you believe saying something like, don't look at the sun or you'll hurt your eyes (and then you look at the sun and say that your eyes are burnt) is telling you off, then we have different definitions of the phrase.
- onraglanroad 1y ago
  It obviously isn't since the UK, for example, has fptp for general elections and far more than two parties.
  - petralithic 1y ago
    Parliamentary systems are not comparable to presidential ones when it comes to voting systems.
ethin 1y ago
This problem is only magnified when you consider our voting system. Any ranked voting system inherently runs into Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which makes what we have right now not exactly democratic. The solution would be to switch to something like approval voting but good luck getting that going.
- mindslight 1y ago
  It's been a while since I've studied the details of voting systems, but it seems like Approval voting just moves the spoiler effect into how people vote - ie strategic voting. Personally I think the possibilities of circular ties under Ranked Pairs is oversold. Society is well acquainted with the concept of a tie, and whatever tiebreaker procedure we define probably won't factor into voter strategy all that much (that is, it will be less of an effect than the people who don't understand they can vote for more than one candidate)
  - ClayShentrup 1y ago
    > it seems like Approval voting just moves the spoiler effect into how people vote that's orthogonal. ranked voting methods already have (arguably more severe) response to strategic voting AND ALSO can fail IIA even with no strategy applied, just by changing an irrelevant alternative. > Personally I think the possibilities of circular ties under Ranked Pairs is oversold. what does that even mean? we have VSE figures that measure the combined effect of all failures, including when the Condorcet winner isn't the favorite candidate of the electorate (not the social utility maximizer). https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse-graph.html https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse-graph.html that's not under or oversold, it's just measured performance.
    - mindslight 1y ago
      Restating my disclaimer of "It's been a while since I've studied the details of voting systems"... > ranked voting methods ... can fail IIA even with no strategy applied, just by changing an irrelevant alternative. Can you clarify whether you're referring to some ranked methods (eg IRV), or all ranked methods (ie including ranked pairs) ? > that's not under or oversold, it's just measured performance. Isn't this due to defining "performance" in a way that is congruent with Approval (/ Score) ? A quick skim of that VSE page has it talking about "utility", which I would imagine is a scalar per candidate representing "happiness" ? The problem I have with Approval is that coming from our two-terrible-party system - do I Approve my latent terrible party or not? That choice seems purely down to strategy, compared to being able to rank them to say I completely prefer the new party/candidate over my latent terrible party, and my latent terrible party over the other latent terrible party. The dynamic also seems exacerbated knowing there will be a lot of people who continue to vote exactly as they did under plurality.

toolazytologin 1y ago

Or “politics” are too much of their identity and they always vote for “their guy” regardless of the merits. Education does not matter when the vote has nothing to so with rationality and is only rooting for a team. Corruption will never be solved. It could possibly be reduced if there was less ROI. I expect that would require shrinking the government so there is less centralized power. A limited federal government and more administrative power handed back to the states (within reason) would be interesting.

ryandrake 1y ago
Too many people treat politics like sports fandom. I know people whose political views are the exact opposite of Party X, but if you ask them, they will tell you they will always vote for Party X, because they were born and raised an X, and stick by their team no matter what they do. They're like fucking Eagles fans. They have this weird "team loyalty" that I just don't get.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  > Too many people treat politics like sports fandom. I know people whose political views are the exact opposite of Party X, but if you ask them, they will tell you they will always vote for Party X, because they were born and raised an X, and stick by their team no matter what they do. This part makes enough sense. > They're like fucking Eagles fans. Now you've gone and implied 95% of sports fans aren't that way?? I don't understand your argument any more.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    Haha every Eagles fan I know is ride or die.