Third parties are mathematically impossible until we ditch first past the post voting:
We need our vote to be a list, not a checkbox.
FPTP is not real democracy for this reason.
No, no, THIS time protest-voting to allow fascism will work to usher in a real left-wing movement in this country, promise! /s
Yeah, fascist government are known for doing some voting reforms after all
But but, building a real third party from the ground up in local elections and/or changing our voting system from first past the post takes a lot of time and real effort. That’s a lot of hard work. It’s a lot harder than just showing up to one election every 4 years and casting a vote that makes you feel like you’re special and smarter than everyone else.
Yeah, I’ve recently talked with my therapist about this choice between very slow, very hard work and sitting on my butt dreaming. And about the idea that it’s better to avoid action than to act, if I’m not sure I’ll act right. And how it apparently came to me in my teens, when I’ve been doing martial arts for some time, girls would smile at me often, and in general I thought I might be too stupid and happy and there should be something smarter. That ‘smarter’ was, of course, just another teenage idea of being wise and not like everyone else. Fucked up my life for a decade.
By the way, people who’d be removed and theoretical and talk about some imagined third movement created via some magic other than voting - would be called ‘idiots’ in ancient Athens. Because they are on the side of an idea, not real politics. Then it became a rude word.
Any such decision to try and find a smart shortcut, or that it’s better to wait and see how it goes instead of sweating, - are all wrong and are exactly what propaganda works for. Being honest is smarter than being dishonest. And voting for the party most fitting your ideals is smarter than for the lesser evil.
Tell that to all the people who will be hurt if that protest vote enables someone worse.
Voting for the party that is consciously using the other one as a boogeyman will enable someone worse with no doubt. They are both worse.
And before the actual ballots are being cast, the public opinion sending right signals to Dems would reduce that risk.
None of that has anything to do with the topic at hand.
It’s my choice to make whether that is true.
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That’s not how reality works, I’m afraid.
That is exactly how subjective reality works. Everything is interconnected, so whether something is relevant to some subject is purely a matter of choice.
Except some people of questionable intelligence and culture consider their choice on that matter more important than that of others.
“Why would I vote for a primary party candidate who supports ranked choice voting when I can just throw my vote away on a third-party candidate that will never be elected? I’ve got principles!”
Because apparently throwing your vote away will somehow convince politicians to move left or something, despite all the evidence that it won’t.
The only evidence we have is that not enough people vote third party.
Ranked choice voting seems like a great way to create huge political instability. Let’s take the system that has worked decent for 248 years and completely replace it with something less well tested. We already have uncertainty we don’t need to mess with the system more.
You don’t want to mess about with that democracy nonsense. We’ve had a monarchy that has worked decent for a millennium, and you want it replace it with some untested, newfangled system?
worked decent
This is how we know you’re not here in good faith 😬
If people vote in the primaries for candidates who support ranked choice voting, then yes.
You’d need to grow the third party / greens by having them become a viable party in local elections and state elections first. The greens have failed to do that. Which means they have no chance except to spoil the election.
That’s never going to happen
I was a proud third party voter for a long time but changed my mind after watching CGPGrey’s video about first past the post. It’s not really ABOUT trying to change minds but FPTP voting rules really do mean that a two party system is bound to very basic human psychology.
If you watched that video you probably realized we are using the worst possible voting system and are actively advocating for reforming the American voting process?
Any chance I get!
Many countries with FPTP have multi-party systems, including Canada and the UK.
Want to build a viable third party for presidential elections? Start small at the city/county level and eventually you will have candidates at the state/federal level. Today’s city council is tomorrow’s senator/president. Does it really surprise anyone that a relatively unknown and unproven candidate outside of the two major parties doesn’t get any traction in a federal election?
Oh it’s that easy eh?
I think you might need to reread my post, I didn’t say it was easy. It’s reality, which generally isn’t easy.
768 votes wth is wrong with Americans bruh
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Tehreek-e-Insaf
If you can create a successful grassroots political party in an environment where your party members and constituents are constantly attacked, murdered, bombed, jailed, tortured, votes faked, votes destroyed, and vote miscounts, you can definitely pull it off in the USA.
It took Pakistan only 20 years to cause a collapse of their corrupt 2 party system and challenge the military dictatorship. People never believed PTI would mount any sort of challenge, but they did by building a solid populist movement, despite facing all of the above.
The “you must vote the lesser evil” is a fallacy that both parties in the USA perpetuate in an attempt to convince you to believe 3rd party voting is a waste of time.
You can’t just sit back and complain about the rigged system like “but muh first past the poll voting” as if either Democrats or Republicans will change the system in any way to make it easier for their rivals.
This is exactly why I dislike the Democratic party in particular so much. They are a corporate monolith that pretends to care about your leftist demands by handing out pennies worth of change to get your vote, then the second they refuse to actually significantly change something you demand, they have the audacity to blame you, the voter, for not sucking up to their shitty policies when they inevitably lose the election.
Current case in point: "There is no genocide in Gaza, and we believe we can win without our constituents because our opponent is a mentally insane baby ".
Shittiest take on this community by far.
They have a first past the post parliamentary system, derived from the UK. The US has a separation of powers between its executive branch and its legislative branch.
The way to build third parties is by reforming the democratic system state by state to have a ranked choice system open non-partisan primary to select the top two final candidates followed by a general election between these two candidates for each election to elect a representative or president.
It helps mitigate the flaws of the ranked choice system to have it stop at the final two and let the voters choose between these final two choices. It helps get candidates that are at the center of voter opinion distribution.
This means the hard work of mobilizing together and working across partisan lines, recruiting the majority of Americans that are pro-democracy in each and every state.
The way to build third parties is by reforming the democratic system state by state to have a ranked choice system
Spending decades to tinker with the mechanics of an election system that excludes 40% of the population via its baseline construction? Seems like you’re going to keep getting the same results.
What good is Ranked Choice Voting in a state like Florida, where 1.7M people are excluded through the state’s Felony Disenfrachisement system? FFS, the state voted on an amendment to reform Felony Disenfrachisement and the legislature just cancelled it out. Gerrymandering means you’ll never see a non-conservative state senate and you’re unlikely to see more than a moderate conservative occupy the Governor’s mansion.
That’s not a FPTP problem, its a problem of targeted state-wide ethnic disenfranchisement.
I tried making a similar argument on Facebook in 2016 when Trump won.
I didn’t vote for either of the top two, but I did vote 3rd party. I voted on someone that i felt would be just as good a fit as the other two at that time. I wanted change, and tried to get so-called friends to change the way they thought about voting. Some of those people were the kind to say “my vote doesn’t matter. They’ll elect whomever they want in office.”
I even went so far as to draw a very shitty comic that pointed out the other options on the ballot, and how we as a society could push for political change BY VOTING.
Sigh… I was called a classless human being by an immigrant from the UK I went to college with. Her friends, and even one professor kept blowing up my DMs calling me trash for not supporting Clinton. That election really showed me the true colors of people. Since then i just tell people i am “unaffiliated” when they ask which party i support.
Shittiest take on this community by far.
It’s an myriad of reasons from what I can tell. Americans are conditioned to think along the status quo lines even if there is certain degree of freedom of thought. The American corporate media carves the political landscape to intentionally but subtly influence folks to pick either only Democrats or Republicans.
Another reason is that, I suppose rugged invidualism won out in the American society for better mobilisation. As you rightly pointed out, there just isn’t grassroots activism among American people (not counting civil and lgbt rights which are undoubtedly grassroots activism and successful ones at that). But this isn’t what it used to be. Before and in the early 20th century, there have been other third political parties still gaining respectable number of votes, the last one being the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debbs. He won a respectable 1 million votes as a presidential candidate while campaigning from prison during World War I.
Not sure what happened why political grassroots activism that could counter either Democratic and Republican parties died out, but my guess is that the proliferation of mass media in the 20th century may have had a hand to convince people to stick with two parties, as well as heavy emphasis on individualistic values.
This comment was reported. I’m not seeing any issue but the reporter can dm me and point it out if I’m missing something.
People just report whatever they disagree with, I guess.
Love shit like this because you all lack the same fundamental goddamn knowledge.
It’s up to the states who goes on the ballot. There are only three political parties in the United States with enough support to get on all 51 (50 States + DC) ballots. Those are the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Libertarians. The Libertarians are just as fascist as the Republicains, but they don’t have the guise of Christianity to cover it up, so they get pretty few votes. Beyond those three, It is entirely dependent on the state who you get to vote for. I, for example, get four choices in my state. The big two, the libertarians, and the Legalize Marijuana Now parry. The latter is a small party who’s soul goal is getting marijuana legalized. Wanna vote for the Green party? Tough shit. I suppose write ins are an option, but there’s roughly 200,000,000 people who vote, so good luck convincing even half of them to write your name down without a party supporting you.
In other words, “Lesser of two evils” isn’t a mindset. For a lot of us, it’s literally the only choice.
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Good job not reading the post lmao
Like I am literally telling you there are only three options on the ballot and two of them are significantly worse than the third.
Some of these third party people could get elected to the senate if they tried, but have to try for the top job with no experience because their ego can’t take that they don’t know everything.
I could get elected to senate probably, if I was willing to spend fifteen years doing local and state office first. Ain’t nobody got that kind of time I got hospital bills
If only there was some kind of proven road map where countries who has been dominated by their ruling elite using the two party trick went on to form a kind of labour movement that forced a third choice on the ruling class…
Actually most people are not aware. So its better to spell it out.
glances at the current state of the UK Labour party
It’s been known to work for a bit, but its also been known to collapse right back into the old two-party dichotomy. I think the hysteria around third parties baked into every election since the Bush Era SCOTUS-powered election theft in Florida is overblown, particularly when so much of the electorate lives in one-party dominant states. But I’ve also noticed successful outsider parties - the German Greens, France’s En March, the UK Liberal Dems - seem to embrace Corporationism as quickly as any of their German Christian Democrat / French Socialist / UK Tory peers.
And then there’s always this specter of fascism floating on the edge of the political establishment. Your Alternative for Germany, your National Front, and your UKIP create this existential crisis for liberal voters, such that they’re persistently terrorized into voting the “safe” centrist candidates in while ostracizing any candidate actually running on the things they say they want.
The Ruling Elite have the effective roadmap to keep the proles in line. Continuously finance a paper tiger on the right-flank of the election cycle. Make immigration a boogeyman issue that mobilizes the reactionaries within the state to turn out in droves. Then dangle a weak liberal as a release valve - a Starmer or Biden or Macron or Olaf Schultz - that nobody particularly likes, but the liberal-leaning base are told is “electable” because they can win the support of the conservative national media.
People are bombarded with this false choice - weak liberal or strongman conservative - decade after decade, all the way around the edge of the Atlantic, until the institutions these weak liberals are supposed to support are falling apart and the strongman conservatives can easily take over.
Its a doomed system.
The labour party is certainly flawed but you have to remember all they’ve given the people of the UK, in the brief times they’ve been in power (relatively speaking).
I’m not claiming it will fix everything but I would argue that the UK and just about every country thats had a labour movement that got into power benefited from it. Well, the 99% did.
Unless you know when the revolution is coming, it might be better to make alternative arrangements. Short of running to the hills and joining a commune, we’re quite deliberately not given any other option than to vote for better oppression.
The labour party is certainly flawed but you have to remember all they’ve given the people of the UK
You’re going to have to fill me in, because it seems Keir took office and immediately declared that there is no money left in the banana stand.
They couldn’t even restore funding to the H2 connection from Manchester to London, and that’s shit that was already paid for.
True or not, it would take something very special for the new Labour government to have already of given things to the people of the UK, seeing as Parliaments only been back for 2 weeks, don’t you think?
I mean, I have moderate expectations at best. I hope they don’t make things worse but, at the same time, I also think they’ll fall well short of achieving time travel.
Were you expecting time travel? I think you might be disappointed, if so.
I also think they’ll fall well short of achieving time travel.
It’s crazy when something as simple as rejecting the Cass Report and ending the instructional abuse of Trans People is equated with SciFi tiers of impossibility.
I’m sure that made sense, followed on naturally from the conversation and didn’t just sound like unhinged ranting and deflections in your head, at least.
Oh no. JK Rowling has entered the chat.
Look up The Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell.
Falwell made himself a big deal in the GOP by getting his troops to show up at every single local Republican event with enough votes to make sure that they got everything they wanted. It started small with sheriffs and county clerks, and then Congress members.
Exactly. Anytime a small party runs a presidential campaign it’s not only a waste of time but it’s a waste of money and resources that could have gone to actual races that could affect actual change. Plus they help to delegitimize and demoralize the movements.
The GOP pushed both the Greens and the Libertarians to siphon votes from the Dems.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/09/10/metro/jill-stein-new-hampshire-ballot-republican-help/
I’ve yet to meet a Libertarian who wasn’t just a lazy Republican.
I knew a few back in college but good Lord they were naive. He was a sweet kid but one of them thought we can get rid of the military and just use mercenaries.
“The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” by Robert A. Heinlein. It’s a really good science fiction novel and the handbook for a lot of Libertarians.
You can read and enjoy it as a story, but if you examine it you’ll see all the hoops the author had to jump through in order to make his society work.
One of the most glaring examples is that there are almost no guns in a prison where machine tools are readily available.
I was a youth at that time and my only memory of the Moral Majority is the boob scene in Airplane! 🤷♀️
one of my earliest memories
LOL and how do you suppose we make third parties viable? Thoughts and prayers?
Not by voting for people in elections they can’t win. Vote at the local and state level or in primaries for people who will enact voting reform.
Like who?
I don’t know where you live so I don’t have any relevant suggestions, sorry.
Name anyone anywhere
You know that’s not how elections work, but if you’re genuinely interested here are some lists of third-party candidates in the US:
You can find comparable lists on the sites of many more non-frivolous political third parties in which you may be interested, which can probably be found from their Wikipedia entries.
You know that’s not how elections work
WTF are you talking about? That’s exactly how they work, and its what the person I replied to suggested I do about it.
here are some lists of third-party candidates in the US:
This is just a list of people I’ve been repeatedly told in this thread that I should not vote for…?
This thread, specifically this comment, is telling you you should vote for alternative parties at state and local levels. The idea is to build up that third party’s actual presence in government from the ground up, which is a far superior strategy to splitting a critical presidential race and feeling like you’ve accomplished anything good.
Changing the voting system so that third parties are actually possible.
You need a cardinal voting system, otherwise you’ll fall prey to Durverger’s Law and Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.
I favor STAR, it’s the best system designed to date.
The problem is that these systems are way more complex and have edge cases where someone unpopular gets elected. Making major changes to a system that has worked for 248 years seems like a recipe for disaster.
and have edge cases where someone unpopular gets elected
As opposed to the current system, where someone unpopular always gets elected?
Making major changes to a system that has worked for 248 years
It hasn’t worked. It’s deeply flawed and we currently use the worst-possible process, rooted in ancient history.
Edge cases like you describe are a key part of Ordinal voting systems, Cardinal voting systems are immune to that sort of thing.
Also, Cardinal voting systems can be super easy. Take Approval.
Simply take a list of names, and mark next to each candidate you approve of. If you feel like you need to have a moral conundrum over what you feel like approval means, then go ahead, but just mark the next to any or all of the names on the list that you like.
After that, the counting is simple as well. You add up the approval of each candidate, independent of what any other candidate gets, and then the winner is the one with the most approval.
It is literally impossible to elect an unpopular candidate via Approval, unless only unpopular candidates run.
STAR is slightly more complex, in that you rate each candidate on a scale of 0-5. Again, no one actually cares about your personal journey in rating someone a 4 or whatnot, just do it and move on.
Then when counting, you again add up the numbers, take the highest two, and see where they rate on each individual ballot. If one is rated higher than the other, they get the vote from that ballot.
Changing the voting system so that third parties are actually possible.
And why would anyone do that when everyone takes time out of their day to express their approval for the existing 2 parties?
I’m not gonna answer that question. I don’t have the perfect answer ready for you.
Instead I will tell you what happens when you vote third party in FPTP. Okay, you have a .nl TLD so I guess ssyou’re either in a much better electoral situation or just picked it because it’s cool, but I will use the example of the upcoming US presidential election.
Now, let’s say the race is really even and it’s over. Flipping just one of several key battleground states would’ve placed Harris in the lead, but unfortunately, Trump won. You look at the votes in your state: Trump won by under 600 votes. Nearly 100,000 people voted for a third party candidate that’s actually to the left of Harris. They would’ve preferred Harris, but because they voted third party, they elected Trump.
If this sounds familiar, that’s what happened in 2000. Al Gore could’ve won. Should’ve won. But 3rd party candidate Ralph Nader was further left of him and received a bunch of votes that needed to go to Gore. In Florida, he had nearly 100k votes, and the difference between Bush and Gore was literally triple digits. And it wasn’t even the only state where Gore lost because of the Spoiler Effect
It’s an inherent flaw of the FPTP system and yes, it sucks. It means a vote for a third party is a wasted vote.
I’m not gonna answer that question. I don’t have the perfect answer ready for you.
That’s okay, I don’t expect a “perfect” answer, but what you’re revealing about yourself by not putting forward an answer is that you don’t care about our wants, you’re just mad that we’re not doing what you want.
People tell me all the time voting is how to get what you want, so that’s what I’ve done and what I’ll continue to do.
the Spoiler Effect
Yes, I’m very familiar. Once again, I think this is just manipulating people into your desired outcome. I’m very happy to “spoil” my vote by advocating for someone I actually support, rather than throwing it away on someone I don’t. The fault lies with the system, not with me.
The fault lies with the system, not with me.
The fuckery inherent in the current system being not your fault does not absolve you from voting responsibly in context of the current system. If you are going to throw in a protest vote you are asserting your portion of responsibility for the practical end result of that vote.
It’s a good thing I vote responsibly then. An irresponsible vote would be one that perpetuates the current, broken system.
How does a strategic practical vote within the current system perpetuate it any more or less than a throwaway protest vote?
Are you asking me how protests work? Is that really something that requires explanation?
I’m asking you how, specifically, a protest vote and a strategic vote are any different in terms of perpetuating the shitty system currently in place.
Because there are more effective forms of protest that don’t guarantee with 99.9% accuracy that a fascist is elected if people vote for an alternate party (literally the case this year with the margins, and “dictator day 1”).
Voting should be pragmatic. There are a million other ways to protest/lobby, but honestly the Democrats of today are far more progressive than 20 years ago, because of people who understand the system and change it from the inside, like AOC/Bernie.
with 99.9% accuracy that a fascist is elected if people vote for an alternate party
Just straight up blatant lies here.
There are a million other ways to protest/lobby
I can’t think of a more powerful protest.
like AOC/Bernie.
I would vote for either in a heartbeat but I can’t because they won’t be on the ballot. They will step down and insist you vote for Kamala instead. And even if they were you would insist that I not vote for them anyway because it’s still “throwing away” my vote.
When either party puts forward a candidate without immediately-disqualifying horrendous traits, I will vote for them. But that absolutely never happens. It is almost always the worst-possible candidate, without even considering their political positions. They all accept massive donations from mega-PACs and a deplorable history of selfishness and lies.
Smaller elections. Get state representatives, win a few seats in the house, a few senators… When your party actually contributes to governing then you can discuss running for president. Until then you won’t beat Nader or Perot
And I will repeat the same thing I told the other person who said this. Who should I vote for? What politicians are supporting and advocating for reforming US elections? The answer is none of them, because they’d be lambasted and shunned for trying to upend the status quo.
This is the same tone set by the people who whined that we were refusing to vote for Biden and oh look now Biden isn’t in the race anymore because we refused to accept him.
Keep accepting the one candidate that they spoon in front of us without asking if we actually want that one
It’s a little different because people complained, Pelosi (aka the party listened) acted.
I our current political system, the game theory just doesn’t work for much besides a two party system.
Exactly.
Its applying leverage to the party saying meet these criteria or get spoiled. It’s basically a union for protest votes, and it’s effective. Which makes it extremely important in the current two party system because it’s the only way certain issues will get addressed.
Biden being forced out is a great example.
Democrats will only appeal to people not voting for them already. People showing them they won’t vote for Genocide you already changes policy.
When the pressure gets too high Democrats will cave. If they want your vote make them work for it never let them fearmonger you into giving it for free. Jill Stein 2024 baby.
Those same morons didn’t vote in the primary to oust him.
What primary? No alternative was offered, no debates happened.
You mean in the USA? I guess the more viable path is to campaign to fix their democracy from within the democratic party. And then make new parties.
Spliting from within the party is the usual way.
