[RD] Is the two party system failing and America and would we be better off with more choices?

[Zardnaar]

Somehow I get the feeling your opinion on this would be very different if politicians you agree with controlled the Senate.

What you are advocating for is essentially mob rule. For the childish and simplistic understanding of democracy that merely states "majority rules!" Modern understandings of democracy demand that a nation run on more than just "majority rules!" to call itself democratic. For democracy to exist, the rights and interests of the few must be protected from being run over by the rights and interests of the many. In that context, both the Senate and Electoral College are the most democratic institutions we have since they ensure the small states at least have some kind of means to fight back against the bigger ones.

I also have come to completely reject the whole "one person, one vote" mantra people like you constantly chant. I reject it because it is a thinly veiled attempt to sanitize and legitimize what you are really advocating: tyranny by majority. You aren't at all interested in creating a better democracy, you just want to rig the system in a way that you believe will ensure political dominance for those you agree with.

That kind of is democracy. Something like a constitution protects the other side when they're out of power along with independent judges, police, electoral process including boundaries, and state funded elections.

I think our elections cost around 4 million dollars which would be $200-$300 million scaled up to US demographs.

For both parties.

Countries with really unfair electoral laws (USA is heading down that path rated flawed democracy because of gerrymandering) tend to reform them or collapse.

If it gets bad enough I expect blue states to protest via tax and just have governor's passing laws exempting people paying federal tax. Can't lock the majority up, military can't collect tax, and it's unlikely they'll shoot unarmed protesters via tax evasion.

Then hardliner red states can send in the military (which won't raise tax), reform the electoral process or go broke since they're propped up by blue states.

No taxation without representation. Or look at breaking up the USA. Don't need civil war 2.0 just don't pay tax en masse.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

But do please stop saying "most countries" if you're only talking about those three, or at least say something like "most English-speaking countries."

And keep in mind that the U.S. and the Commonwealth countries have very different systems.

Thank goodness for the NDP and Green parties. Their existence means I have people I can vote for in good conscience. And if the conditions are right, it's amazing what can happen with smaller parties. We actually had an NDP Official Opposition in 2011, when that party's leader was Jack Layton.

 

[Arwon]

The electoral college is a terrible excuse for "representing the small states", it's basically a moderately rurally weighted sortition whose chief beneficiaries are Ohio and Florida, the larger states which by happenstance are near the centre of the current political pendulum. It doesn't amplify the influence of South Dakota any more than it does Hawaii.

It also elects one person for the whole country and just definitionally one person can't be a unique voice for all the bits of it. There's no extra representation or voice there, you're just rolling some uneven dice on who the single person is gonna be.

That's why upper houses are where federations generally place the uneven representation, rather than in the selection of the executive.

 

[mitsho]

There's also differences in how parliaments work. There are the "working" parliaments where in committees law proposals are worked on. They are often quite intransparent as the politicians from several parties do compromises in these backrooms. The discussion on the floor then is most often only about a few details (which can be hugely important). These parliaments are also quite slow and process-oriented. Normally, the lower you go in the hierarchy, the more working parliaments you find (as issues are less contested in regions and cities).

Then there are the "talking" parliaments. Here, a coalition of parties (or in the US case: one of the two) already has a majority. So laws are created outside within one party and then just presented and passed by majority vote. That means talking gets more important and talking means that the opposition needs to use the floor to point out the flaws in the proposed law. They also will point out scandals and ask for documents or information from the government (who usually does have to answer these questions). So here, it acts way more as a check of the government and as an advertisement for the next election (whatever laws the democratic house passes when Senate and President are Republican in the US).

There is of course a continuum and those archetypes do not exist in their true form in nature (;-)), but it shows one thing: the two party system doesn't exist in a vacuum. If the US would actually go from a 2- to a multi-party system, its two chambers of parliament would begin to work quite differently meaning the President would have to work quite differently which results in quite a bit in change in how American Politics works. The US system is after all quite directed at allowing the President to act unilaterally in international relations. I'm not sure the White House could do that with a different political system.

In short: reformation of the political system in the US would in my opinion lead to an avalanche of changes so that the political system would be more revolutionized than reformed.

(And the electoral college doesn't give more weight to small states, it gives more weight to history, aka path dependency).

 

[Ferocitus]

I dunno, your system seems confusing enough already.

It might be confusing, by I don't think it has anywhere near the charm of some experiences elsewhere.
A couple of recollections from when I lived in the ACT (before Arwon* was gelded), but mostly excerpts from wiki.

Candidates for the the first direct election by voters in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) for their own legislative body were elected to fill seats using a modified D'Hondt method for a multi-member single constituency.

It took almost two months after election day to determine the results of the election. Four people won seats on ostensible platforms of abolishing self-government. The result was a hung parliament.

The ballot paper was almost one-metre wide and listed 117 candidates for election representing 22 political parties, including the "Sun-Ripened Warm Tomato Party", "Party! Party! Party!" and "Surprise Party". Not surprisingly, there were some unusual candidates in those parties.

To be fair, there were a number of very unusual candidates before the ACT had their own legislative assembly, for example...
Betty Hocking, a vehement opponent of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, was quoted as stating:
"Is there no-one who can see that the women who hate men are castrating them with their sex discrimination Bills and making them eunuchs in their own kingdoms?"
and
"Delilah cut off Samson's hair and made him her slave. The Sex Discrimination Bill cuts off far more than that."

My favourite from the new crop of vegetables (or fruit) was David Prowse who was elected as a representative of the No Self-Government Party and became Speaker of the inaugural Assembly. After a stint in the airforce, Prowse retrained as a naturopath and was an anti-water fluoridation activist.
IIRC, he later changed both his opposition to water fluoridation in the ACT (one of his major platform policies) and self-government for the ACT. During his term in office, he traveled to Thailand where he was bitten by a holiday resort monkey, and later told a press conference he feared that he might have contracted the rabies virus.

For more chuckles and warnings about proportional voting systems...
D'Hondt (or Jefferson) method:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Hondt_method
Hare–Clark electoral system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare–Clark_electoral_system

ACT Elections with occasional fiascos and salad ingredients:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Australian_Capital_Territory_general_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Capital_Territory_Legislative_Assembly

* The race-horse trained by my former work-mate John Morrissey, not to be confused with Arwon, an Honourable Member of CFC who will, no doubt, have many more and better insights into recent ACT elections.

 

[Zardnaar]

Who's the current Aussie PM and are they getting rolled in the next 6 months?

 

[Ferocitus]

Who's the current Aussie PM and are they getting rolled in the next 6 months?

Unable to parse.
In Australian slang, the word "rolled" can mean "robbed", or "laid", or "defeated".
All seem a bit off-topic here.

 

[Zardnaar]

NZ to Aussie to slang translation.

Rolled
Pushed out, get rid of, replaced

Put another yabbie on the barbie I need to get my thongs.

 

[EnglishEdward]

USA (like UK) would probably be better off with a zero party system.

FPTP works best if constituents can elect their best choice local
represntative free from any entanglement with national parties.

 

[abradley]

"If it ain't broke don't fix it."

 

[Lexicus]

For democracy to exist, the rights and interests of the few must be protected from being run over by the rights and interests of the many.

The result of this is plain for anyone with eyes to see: the destruction of the Republic, its corruption by plutocrats, and its subversion by a party now led by a megalomaniacal would-be dictator.

One thing very clear from this whole episode is that without drastic constitutional reform to enshrine the one person, one vote rule, the US will not survive even as the mockery of a democracy that it is today.

I also have come to completely reject the whole "one person, one vote" mantra people like you constantly chant. I reject it because it is a thinly veiled attempt to sanitize and legitimize what you are really advocating: tyranny by majority. You aren't at all interested in creating a better democracy, you just want to rig the system in a way that you believe will ensure political dominance for those you agree with.

Whereas you only want to ensure you can continue to own military firearms no matter how many voters decide your obsession with deadly toys constitutes a danger to public safety.

 

[uppi]

USA (like UK) would probably be better off with a zero party system.

FPTP works best if constituents can elect their best choice local
represntative free from any entanglement with national parties.

A zero party system is a delusion. One way or another, factions will form.

 

[Lexicus]

A zero party system is a delusion. One way or another, factions will form.

Tbh I think the idea of "zero parties" just expresses a (perhaps unconscious) desire for a strong ruler who makes decisions that are "above politics," ie, a monarch.

 

[Lord Shadow]

In practice, only monarchies (and small territories) lack political parties.

As it's been said, factions will form unless you outright ban them, which isn't very democratic.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Living in DC I don't have any congressional representation at all, but back when I did I didn't feel that I gained anything from having a Congressman representing "my" district.

I feel I have gained a lot by having a Congresswoman who is aligned with me politically. I've moved around a lot and I've always had extremely conservative Republican representatives who would answer my letters by telling me all the reasons I was wrong and why they were going to continue supporting regressive policies. The last representative from my current district barely answered any of my letters at all, but that squared with her refusing to campaign independently or hold town halls after she got heckled once. My current rep sends pretty lengthy responses to my letters and while I know they are canned pre-written responses, the fact that they line up so well with what I asked her to do makes me feel like I have a voice in the government for once. And(!) she's even started answering my letters to her specifically about NASA and support of California aerospace which is a first.

I date it to Newt Gingrich's election as Speaker of the House. It was correctly predicted that he would put an end to the House]s spirit of cooperation.

Hard to say it was predicted when he was explicitly saying that was his goal. But yeah, that's a good place to put the start of the unraveling of cooperation but even through his tenure and on through GW Bush's time in office, the Congress was still able to do things. I'm not saying they did good things, just that they were able to act on national priorities. Fast forward to Obama, and all of a sudden we couldn't even pass basic infrastructure packages despite the country badly needing both from a crumbling infrastructure standpoint and from a jobs standpoint. The only thing our government seems to have agreed on since 2010 is increasing the military budget and which countries to bomb.

My opinion based on my superficial knowledge of the American system is that the electoral college should go. I find it ridiculous that a candidate can win the popular vote yet lose because 200-something more powerful citizens didn't quite reflect the people's will.

It's especially damning that the whole intent of the EC has been lost over time. The EC was meant to be a vanguard against an insane populist president - the EC was meant to vote their conscious and overrule the vote of the people in an instance where someone unfit to govern won the election. That's never happened and never will. There are some states which are trying to eliminate the ability for Electors to even do this (they're called faithless electors when they vote against the results of the popular vote) by legally binding them legally to follow the popular vote in their state. One of the lower courts recently struck down faithless elector laws but even if the Supreme Court upholds that ruling, I still would not expect faithless electors to ever change an election.

Between demographic shifts to cities, gerrymandering, voter suppression, the EC and the Senate, some sort of reform is badly needed or we'll continue down the path of minority rule until we're a democratic country in name only.

 

[caketastydelish]

"If it ain't broke don't fix it."

The system we have is broken.

Anyway, I sincerely believe at least part of the reason why a significant percentage of registered voters don't vote in each election (fluctuates somewhere between 40 to 50%) is because of only two choices.

You can't make everyone happy, and I'll give you a specific example with the UK.

The liberal democrats said if they are elected they would repeal Brexit. Not everyone wants it repealed. So they're not even trying to pretend to please everyone.

When you have literally hundreds of millions of people (America), you can't make them all happy, because like any other country, the people all want different things.

When there are only two choices, that means the "wants" of the population can only be divided to one 50 percent or the other.

Without taking into consideration that within the Democratic and Republican parties there are sub-groups that would contradict one another. Having more parties (that actually have some chance to win) enables voters to have more choices that line up with their needs/wants/ideals.

 

[Arwon]

It might be confusing, by I don't think it has anywhere near the charm of some experiences elsewhere.
A couple of recollections from when I lived in the ACT (before Arwon* was gelded), but mostly excerpts from wiki.

Candidates for the the first direct election by voters in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) for their own legislative body were elected to fill seats using a modified D'Hondt method for a multi-member single constituency.

It took almost two months after election day to determine the results of the election. Four people won seats on ostensible platforms of abolishing self-government. The result was a hung parliament.

The ballot paper was almost one-metre wide and listed 117 candidates for election representing 22 political parties, including the "Sun-Ripened Warm Tomato Party", "Party! Party! Party!" and "Surprise Party". Not surprisingly, there were some unusual candidates in those parties.

To be fair, there were a number of very unusual candidates before the ACT had their own legislative assembly, for example...
Betty Hocking, a vehement opponent of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, was quoted as stating:
"Is there no-one who can see that the women who hate men are castrating them with their sex discrimination Bills and making them eunuchs in their own kingdoms?"
and
"Delilah cut off Samson's hair and made him her slave. The Sex Discrimination Bill cuts off far more than that."

My favourite from the new crop of vegetables (or fruit) was David Prowse who was elected as a representative of the No Self-Government Party and became Speaker of the inaugural Assembly. After a stint in the airforce, Prowse retrained as a naturopath and was an anti-water fluoridation activist.
IIRC, he later changed both his opposition to water fluoridation in the ACT (one of his major platform policies) and self-government for the ACT. During his term in office, he traveled to Thailand where he was bitten by a holiday resort monkey, and later told a press conference he feared that he might have contracted the rabies virus.

For more chuckles and warnings about proportional voting systems...
D'Hondt (or Jefferson) method:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Hondt_method
Hare–Clark electoral system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare–Clark_electoral_system

ACT Elections with occasional fiascos and salad ingredients:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Australian_Capital_Territory_general_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Capital_Territory_Legislative_Assembly

* The race-horse trained by my former work-mate John Morrissey, not to be confused with Arwon, an Honourable Member of CFC who will, no doubt, have many more and better insights into recent ACT elections.

Note that we now have five 5-member electorates under Hare-Clark, and just the three major parties in the Legislative Assembly.

 

[EnglishEdward]

A zero party system is a delusion. One way or another, factions will form.

I know, but it is the formalisation of such factions into general purpose formal parties
with their own rules and centrally detemined policies and candidates that is disastrous.

I can recollect that when the UK was granting many of its African colonies independence,
many of the local leaders were very happy at the concept of constituencies electing
their candidate, but they did not believe a national party structure would work for them.
And I am coming to the conclusion that party structures with a leader don't work well for us.

 

[uppi]

The ballot paper was almost one-metre wide and listed 117 candidates for election representing 22 political parties, [...]

It could be worse:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:München_Stimmzettel_Stadtrat_2014.jpg?uselang=en

That are 900-something candidates and every voter has 80 votes, which they can distribute as they wish. It is allowed to vote multiple times for the same candidate (up to three) and split the vote between all parties, but the vote total must not exceed 80. If it does, the ballot is invalid. It is allowed, however to mark a party as the recipient of the remaining votes in case you mark less than 80 votes.

In theory, it allows the voter very fine-grained control over their vote. In practice, this is way too complicated for little benefit.

I know, but it is the formalisation of such factions into general purpose formal parties
with their own rules and centrally detemined policies and candidates that is disastrous.

I can recollect that when the UK was granting many of its African colonies independence,
many of the local leaders were very happy at the concept of constituencies electing
their candidate, but they did not believe a national party structure would work for them.
And I am coming to the conclusion that party structures with a leader don't work well for us.

Factions will formalize themselves and a faction with leadership is stronger than a faction without. Decrying the effect of parties in democracies is like decrying the effects of gravity - there is nothing you can do about it.

Unless you don't want to have a democracy. An autocratic system doesn't need parties.

 

[Lexicus]

It's especially damning that the whole intent of the EC has been lost over time. The EC was meant to be a vanguard against an insane populist president - the EC was meant to vote their conscious and overrule the vote of the people in an instance where someone unfit to govern won the election.

Hobbs, you should know better than this. The EC was intended to make the three-fifths compromise apply to Presidential elections. There is no doubt about this whatsoever. I've quoted the relevant primary source before and I hope I don't have to do it again.

At the time the electoral college was created the franchise was still restricted by property in most (all?) states - that was the "vanguard against an insane populist president".