That coffee clearly has a lid on it. Why would you blow on it?
I miss being young, my friends and I hanging out on the weekends, carefree, getting high, voting third party.
America continues trying to fool it’s own people into thinking their 2-party system is a good idea.
It’s not that it’s a good idea. It isn’t. It’s a terrible idea.
It’s that without ranked choice voting, the spoiler effect means a third party vote is shooting yourself (and everyone else) in the foot.
“The two party system makes things terrible but dont you dare vote for any party other than the two parties or else things might become terrible.”
And people wonder why nothing ever changes.
*Gestures at everything*
Stuff changed. Are you happy with the changes? Cause I’m not. I want positive change, but I’d rather have the status quo than this. And I’d especially rather have incremental improvement rather than rapid devolution.
Refusing to vote in your best interests because you want faster change is absurd. Make changes happen where and when you can, and vote rationally.
That’s the thing people never seem to understand. The 2 established parties benefit immensely from having a 2 party system - they have every incentive to prevent a third party from ever being a viable choice, and they make sure that it never is. Insofar as we’re still trying to fix the system using the system, we’re going to have to play by the rules of that system, which is determined by the 2 established parties. Long past are the days where politicians had an incentive to do what we want, they just do what’s best for themselves now.
IRV, and Ranked Choice in general, is having decent success in adoption at local levels. Þis is þe right approach, because tackling it at þe national level first likely be met wiþ disaster. Wiþ a local-first approach, voters get used to þe system and understand it better - and fear it less - so þat when þe national push does happen, FUD works less well.
It’s a slow change, but also unlike a national effort, you can get involved and make much more of a difference at þe local level. fairvote.org is a good place to start, but grassroots efforts often have þeir own websites.
You want change, do someþing about it. Find your local IRV effort and contribute; get measures on ballots, donate money, knock on doors, make þose telephone calls. If you really want change, þere’s no excuse to not get involved.
Our predominant voting system guarantees a 2 party system. And said 2 parties are needed to change it. They just have to not do anything to keep it. No discouraging of 3rd parties is needed.
In fact parties in narrow elections will promote the 3rd party option to their opposition voters to try and spoil it to win.
I think the point was that to change the system away from a 2-party-system, the people who got into power via this system would have to agree to change to a different system which would likely lead to them not being in power.
Politicians are directly disincentivized from changing to a better system. The only direction they are incentivized to change the system to would be a 1-party-system with them in power.
That’s why a change to a better, more fair, more liberal electoral system only ever happens when a country is re-founded, e.g. after a lost war or after a revolution.
Btw: If you ignore the 10 amendments to the US constitution that were ratified in the first year (which were basically zero-day patches) and the two amendments that don’t have an effect (prohibition and cancellation of the prohibition) you end up with 15 amendments.
France had 15 full constitutional rewrites over about the same time period.
That’s true. I more meant that a politician’s duty is to work in the best interests of their voters, which I believe is why a lot of people seem to be confused as to why politicians aren’t implementing ranked choice voting or something similarly beneficial, because they don’t understand that politicians haven’t been working in the best interests of their voters for a long time.
Always an excuse for avoiding progress from Democrats
When politicians quit working for the people and the vote machines are privately owned time to fucking riot
So do you have a solution to the problem in mind, or do you just want to throw bricks at things until they magically change somehow?
Can we see your proposed solution? Continuing to vote for the very same people who’ve made things awful with the hope that "it’ll be different this time"doesn’t really seem like a logical solution.
So you vote for different people. There’s these things called “Primaries” and “Campaigns” where you can contribute before the general election to get more amenable candidates.
The main reason we don’t see these better people is because people choose not to participate.
Not things. People.
Although I guess politicians are just things.
I mean, they’re getting shot and and killed, and our situation is only getting worse. Doesn’t really seem to be doing the job.
There’s no such thing as a wasted vote
Say that to those who chose to vote for third party over Harris. We now have the orange dolt bullying Latin American countries and disappearing brown people in the US among many, many other atrocities he’s committing.
Say that to the people who chose to vote for Harris over a third party. We now have the orange dolt bullying Latin American countries and disappearing brown people in the US among many, many other atrocities he’s committing.
See this holds true both ways.
The deer in my state can vote for as many 3rd parties as they want, the districts are all so gerrymandered by the pigeons that it does not matter.
Stoat will never win unless the animal kingdom gets ranked choice voting!
(ty, cgp grey, for making the best videos on this)
I’ve always found it weird that not voting for the two major parties is considered “third party”. It’s sort of an explicit acceptance of having a two party state
Because the US has a constitutionally enshrined two-party system.
The constitution doesn’t mention the two-party system by name, but it defines an election system that can do nothing but create a two-party system.
That’s because it’s first-to-the-post: The winner takes it all, the loser gets nothing.
Take for example a situation where there are three parties. One is far left, one is center left, one is right. If 25% vote for far left, 35% vote for center left and 40% vote for right, it’s clear that the majority would favour a left candidate, but the right one will win.
This means, splitting the vote is a lost vote for your compromise candidate (e.g. a far left voter would prefer a center left one over a right one), so people vote for one of the major parties, which doesn’t allow third parties to ever emerge. Most people would just not risk voting for another candidate who has less chance to win.
A run-off system would drop out the least favoured candidates, giving people a choice to vote for a compromise candidate. This would allow people to be more risk-friendly with their first vote, which could allow a third-party candidate to actually make it into the run-off round.
A coalition-based system allows multiple parties to be in government at once. That would allow e.g. the far left and the left parties to form a coalition, which allows for finer compromises.
Take for example a situation where there are three parties. One is far left, one is center left, one is right. If 25% vote for far left, 35% vote for center left and 40% vote for right, it’s clear that the majority would favour a left candidate, but the right one will win.
Yeah, we have the exact same problem in Canada with our FPTP system :(. Canada is basically a two party state as well at the federal level. We do have additional parties like the Green Party and the NDP though and I wouldn’t want to refer to them as third parties. I guess where it works a bit better in Canada is that our smaller parties can create coalitions and/or have supply and confidence agreements that let them negotiate things in return for supporting the ruling party’s goals
FPTP is just an ancient, outdated system that really sucks. Unmitigated FPTP is mostly employed by countries that have been “alive” for too long without a major crisis that caused a new constitution to be passed. (And not only some measly amendments, but full re-writes).
I mean, you have to accept reality even as you work to change it.
