Unfortunately our democracy is flawed, and our election system punishes similar candidates who run against each other in the general election.
Because of this, our political parties are more like coalitions, made up various groups with overlapping goals, who choose one candidate through a primary, so that they don’t cannibalize each other in the general election.
This means that those who run third party anyway are either looking for publicity, cynically playing the spoiler, or fools.
inconsequential fun fact: Tipper Gore is part of an SCP Foundation story arc, starting from here. It's pretty well written, even if it does not have to do anything with the discussion here.
I'd prefer Approval Voting, RCV has really been over-sold and it practically the same to FPTP anyway. In RCV elections, the first round winner ultimately wins the race 96% of the time. That article tries to claim it somehow makes a difference in campaigns, but in a practical sense, it doesn't. Campaigns rarely say "rank me second," because of course not. Who would aim for second place? It also has unfortunate consequences with disenfranchising poor and minority communities, because they end up submitting invalid ballots at a significantly higher rate.
Anyway, so if you're all like "stop attacking RCV it's better than FPTP!" Well, I agree, but use that energy to run a referendum campaign and switch your local elections to Approval Voting instead. It's used in both Fargo and St. Louis and we're seeing the same positive effects that RCV has without the voter disenfranchisement.
I agree with using Approval Rating over RCV. However I don’t agree that RCV would yield the same results as FPTP in our heavily polarized Presidential election political climate. With most citizens putting a third-party candidate between their party and the opposing party, third-parties would be quickly identified as the ideal place for a moderate candidate. PACs would immediately capitalize on that opportunity to maintain a centrist in office. It could potentially yield worse results in the long term.
I’d love to see the National Popular Vote bill get passed. It’s gotten much closer since its inception. 209/270 electoral votes in total have signed. It would circumvent the Electoral College and equalizing the voting power of citizens over land, and be a massive step towards ease of implementation of new voting systems.
I agree that the National Popular Vote is a fantastic idea. I can't wait to see it hit the threshold and immediately get hit with lawsuits from terrified entrenched powers.
I strongly disagree that RCV would have a significant effect on the presidential campaign, since it has already been shown to have little effect on any other campaign. It's also ubiquitous in Australia, with a similar two-party forcing when implemented for their single-seat elections. The only reason they have third parties is because of their proportional elections.
Would you say that those elections were as polarized as our presidential elections are? Do you see my concern regarding all voters choosing their own party first, third-party second, and opposing party third? If first choice is split nearly 50/50, wouldn’t that put the third-party candidate at the top?
No? Under the usual American implementation of RCV only the highest ranked candidate on a ballot gets the vote from that ballot. If no one has a majority of the remaining votes the person in last place is eliminated and their votes are redistributed according to the individual ballot preferences. So if the American presidency was ~50/50 red v blue as first choices (with a few people picking third party candidates) whichever third party candidate that took last place would get eliminated. In fact, mathematically speaking, if red and blue each got at least 1/3 of the first place cuts votes, one of them must be the eventual winner and the other must take second place.
There are other systems that could cause chaos with your suggested rankings, but they're generally not considered serious methods exactly because they are chaotic under reasonable circumstances.
Yeah, FairVote is.... Okay. In terms of objective vs political, they tend to be as political as they can get while still being objective. They used to actually say a few things that weren't exactly true, but opponents kept calling them out on it so they quit as far as I know. Wikipedia would be a better source, though be aware that proponents of any system will try to sneak in promotional language. But, at least on Wikipedia there's also people trying to keep things objective.
These are what I would consider the most relevant articles if you're looking to understand the realistic options in America.
I would say that you don't actually need to read any of these articles particularly closely. They can get very technical. You can just skim them for the parts you find interesting.
Is that supposed to be a gotcha? I’m asking because you entirely dodged the fact that he’s grifting the republicans, which calls your point into question.
It would be stupid if the Dems didn’t also fund third party candidates. That doesn’t change the fact that Kennedy and Stein are grifting Republican money to try to run as spoilers. You’re so all in on the line about democrats being evil I really have to question whether you’re arguing in good faith.
