I originally said “not Trump” And probably should stick with that. Basically that election was a 4 year referendum on Trump. That energized a lot of the Democrat base, and got the vote out. And Biden still struggled, when he probably should have destroyed him.
It honestly feels like both parties are choosing the weakest candidates over the last eight years.
We need serious political reform before that is likely to change. A country of 300+ million people with only 2 parties, and a choice between 2 weak old men. It is deeply depressing.
I fear the reform. Mostly because most reform won’t really change what people expect.
Let’s say we get rid of First past the post. But still the people with the most money will still win the presidency. Libertarians constantly talk about "Well if ranked voting had a "… What happens when people vote only for their favorite and don’t throw a vote to the libertarians? I imagine it’ll still be two parties.
I love looking at Britain’s parliament. I love hearing about the “Pirate party” got a seat or what not. But yet when you hear talk of them, it always seems like the Labour or Tories are the only ones who have real power. I know the theory, and how the smaller groups get SOME say, especially when one group isn’t holding 50 percent of the house, but it’s still MOSTLY the voice of two parties… so what’s the major difference?
I mean we’ll progressives, and liberals, and they’ll form a coalition and get power… and it’ll be different than the modern democratic party because… umm?
(There are probably reforms that may make a major change, but I do feel like we’ll see the same system evolve quite often)
Heads up friend, the UK also has FPTP. We’ve effectively got a two party system because we have the same way of voting as you do. Even where a third party actually has a seat (like the SNP in Scotland), it just becomes a two party race between them and whichever of the two big ones the third party didn’t locally displace
Northern Ireland is basically the exception, as it has separate parties and its very specific history
Another reason to fear reform, the wrong reform might win and set us back further.
See, the leading candidate for election reform is currently Ranked Choice. RCV can lead to worse election outcomes than First Past the Post, and has lead to worse results in several US based elections already.
It’s a deeply flawed system that, on the surface, looks like an upgrade. And when people experience the flaws first hand, it makes them not want to try actual better systems.
Want a super simple system that easily outperforms RCV and FPtP? Try Approval, It’s been tried in a few US elections to good result.
If you want to be able to rank your candidate choices against each other and have it matter, try STAR, a voting system designed to be easily used and easily understood. Designed to take advantage of basic human psychology to get the best result.
The choice for the star rating to be 0-5 was very specific. Humans tend to group ratings at the edges and the middle in ranking systems. For instance, a rating system of 0-100 would see lots of 0, 1, 50, 99, 100. And that would be about all the points of the scale used. You might have one person out of a hundred who will use more, but mostly it’s going to be ratings at either end of the scale, and then smack dab in the middle. So the best rating system is actually the scale of 0-5.
Anyway. STAR takes that rating, then adds them all up for each candidate, the top two move on to the second round, where each ballot is examined to see who placed higher on that ballot. You count those ballots as their vote total. You also count the ballots where they were scored evenly and release that info as a “no preference” so that the winner knows what sort of mandate they actually have.
If you want to change things up, you could also do the average in the first round. It slightly changes how the votes are counted, with ratings of 0 actively hurting a candidate, but in testing it doesn’t seem to actually change the result.
Anyway, this whole tangent was about how RCV is bad, and saps political will from being able to implement actually good systems, which makes RCV even worse.
Oh, a final thought, with Approval and STAR, you can also ditch the primary elections. They can both handle more candidates natively, and perform better the more you have. RCV actually performs worse the more candidates you have, which has led to several of its failures.
Someone who is even slightly decent doesn’t have what it takes to get the Republican nomination.
I originally said “not Trump” And probably should stick with that. Basically that election was a 4 year referendum on Trump. That energized a lot of the Democrat base, and got the vote out. And Biden still struggled, when he probably should have destroyed him.
It honestly feels like both parties are choosing the weakest candidates over the last eight years.
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The same thing is going on everywhere, tbh.
Right-wing populist arseholes are gaining traction because the political mainstream has just been fucking us all over for decades.
Agree.
We need serious political reform before that is likely to change. A country of 300+ million people with only 2 parties, and a choice between 2 weak old men. It is deeply depressing.
I fear the reform. Mostly because most reform won’t really change what people expect.
Let’s say we get rid of First past the post. But still the people with the most money will still win the presidency. Libertarians constantly talk about "Well if ranked voting had a "… What happens when people vote only for their favorite and don’t throw a vote to the libertarians? I imagine it’ll still be two parties.
I love looking at Britain’s parliament. I love hearing about the “Pirate party” got a seat or what not. But yet when you hear talk of them, it always seems like the Labour or Tories are the only ones who have real power. I know the theory, and how the smaller groups get SOME say, especially when one group isn’t holding 50 percent of the house, but it’s still MOSTLY the voice of two parties… so what’s the major difference?
I mean we’ll progressives, and liberals, and they’ll form a coalition and get power… and it’ll be different than the modern democratic party because… umm?
(There are probably reforms that may make a major change, but I do feel like we’ll see the same system evolve quite often)
Heads up friend, the UK also has FPTP. We’ve effectively got a two party system because we have the same way of voting as you do. Even where a third party actually has a seat (like the SNP in Scotland), it just becomes a two party race between them and whichever of the two big ones the third party didn’t locally displace
Northern Ireland is basically the exception, as it has separate parties and its very specific history
Another reason to fear reform, the wrong reform might win and set us back further.
See, the leading candidate for election reform is currently Ranked Choice. RCV can lead to worse election outcomes than First Past the Post, and has lead to worse results in several US based elections already.
It’s a deeply flawed system that, on the surface, looks like an upgrade. And when people experience the flaws first hand, it makes them not want to try actual better systems.
Want a super simple system that easily outperforms RCV and FPtP? Try Approval, It’s been tried in a few US elections to good result.
If you want to be able to rank your candidate choices against each other and have it matter, try STAR, a voting system designed to be easily used and easily understood. Designed to take advantage of basic human psychology to get the best result.
The choice for the star rating to be 0-5 was very specific. Humans tend to group ratings at the edges and the middle in ranking systems. For instance, a rating system of 0-100 would see lots of 0, 1, 50, 99, 100. And that would be about all the points of the scale used. You might have one person out of a hundred who will use more, but mostly it’s going to be ratings at either end of the scale, and then smack dab in the middle. So the best rating system is actually the scale of 0-5.
Anyway. STAR takes that rating, then adds them all up for each candidate, the top two move on to the second round, where each ballot is examined to see who placed higher on that ballot. You count those ballots as their vote total. You also count the ballots where they were scored evenly and release that info as a “no preference” so that the winner knows what sort of mandate they actually have.
If you want to change things up, you could also do the average in the first round. It slightly changes how the votes are counted, with ratings of 0 actively hurting a candidate, but in testing it doesn’t seem to actually change the result.
Anyway, this whole tangent was about how RCV is bad, and saps political will from being able to implement actually good systems, which makes RCV even worse.
Oh, a final thought, with Approval and STAR, you can also ditch the primary elections. They can both handle more candidates natively, and perform better the more you have. RCV actually performs worse the more candidates you have, which has led to several of its failures.