Why do American ballots have more than two choices, when the news media has spent their time pretending there are only two?
Why do American ballots have more than two choices, when the news media has spent their time pretending there are only two?
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A combination of first-past-the-post and winner-take-all systems for nearly all elections, coupled with the Electoral College for the presidency.
First-past-the-post is a system wherein only the plurality candidate wins. Here is an example:
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For a given seat, be it a president, senator, representative, or local office, assume Party A wins 40%, Party B wins 30%, Party C wins 20% and Party D wins 10%.
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Despite a majority of voters preferring someone other than Party A, Party A wins and everyone else loses. This is first-past-the-post voting, and with no other considerations given to the other votes, makes it a winner-take-all system.
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The majority aren't happy with this, but the other parties continue running their candidates and continue losing because Party A wins the greatest portion of votes each time.
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Because the other parties can't even win any power, there's no "coalition" or "alliance" that can be made to shut out Party A.
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Party B decides to take advantage of everyone's dissatisfaction. They adjust some of their policies to be more favorable to Parties C and D to attract some of their voters. This is the closest thing to a "coalition" that the first-past-the-post system can achieve.
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During the next election, Party A wins 40%, party B wins 42%, Party C wins 12%, and Party D wins 6%. Party B assumes office, starts fulfilling their agenda, a lot of their voters aren't completely happy, but at least Party A isn't in power.
This illustrates how only 2 prevailing parties come to be, because it is not possible to win an election in the US unless you obtain the most votes.
For the presidential election, the electoral college is a winner-take-all system determined by the limited pool of national electors.
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Like all other offices, the presidential election is still first-past-the-post. Only the candidate who wins the most votes wins the election, everyone else wins nothing.
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For the presidential election, the only votes that matter are the electoral votes. Each US state is assigned a certain portion of electors which is based on population but is often very disproportionate in practice (due to a capped elector total nationally, and minimum elector thresholds for less-populous states).
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Each elector is 1 vote for the president, and the electors are supposed to vote based on how the citizens of that state voted. This is the distinction between the electoral vote and the popular vote.
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With limited exception, this is also a winner-take-all system, meaning all the electors for a given state must also vote in line with one another. If a state has 10 votes and the election is 51% Party A and 49% Party B, all 10 electors must vote for Party A even though it's almost a clean split down the middle for the popular vote.
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This results in cases where even if a majority of voters nationally prefer Party B, Party A's candidate could still win because they won more electors.
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Accepting the system is unfair but being unable/unwilling to change it, the two prevailing parties try to game the system any way they can to swing things in their favor. They identify a handful of states where leads are very narrow and focus all their attention there. These are swing states.
Why do people hate third parties/why do they never win?
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For the reasons illustrated above, a third-party can never win any significant amount of power under the current system.
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When a race is even remotely close, small factors like people who choose to vote third-party instead of supporting one of the other two parties can turn the tide in a swing state, and thereby turn the tide nationally.
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There is a trend of third parties getting financial/promotional support from political groups that are actually opposed to their policies, but are using the third party to attract votes away from their main competition for a given seat. This is called the spoiler effect.
This outlines how, under the current political structure of the US, there can never be a successful third party in government outside of local grassroots elections, and why there is so much hostility towards third parties. Third parties aren't there to win, they are propped up by larger political interests who use them to take votes from their competition.
This is why you may often see "A vote for a third-party (e.g. Jill Stein) is a vote for Trump" during this election, because the Green Party is being primarily supported by right-wing interest groups this election despite being one of the more "leftist" options on paper.
The only thing I would add is that with the electoral system, it's not the candidate with the most electoral votes that win, it's the candidate who gets half+1 votes (270 or more currently)
If candidate A wins 250 votes, candidate B wins 200 votes and candidate C wins 88 votes, candidate A does not win. If there is no winner, the house of representatives votes for president, each state getting one vote.
Another reason why third party presidential candidates are never serious contenders.
can we just set up a bot that does nothing but reply with these two comments to every "why no 3rd parties bro" question. We'll turn it on three months before every US election and let it travel around lemmy servers. then turn if off until this whole cycle repeats.
Don't forget a little note saying "Think this is stupid? Vote for Ranked-Choice Voting!'
You said to not vote third party, so you can't vote for rcv.
You don't need to vote third party to get Ranked Choice Voting. There are ballot measures this election to introduce ranked choice voting, independent on who you vote for President. You can vote for Harris and RCV if you're in one of these states:
Oregon
Oregon voters will vote on Measure 117 in November 2024 on whether they will use ranked choice voting general elections for statewide and federal offices (starting in 2028).
The Oregon Legislature passed the reform in 2023, but any change to the state constitution requires referral to the voters before enacting.
Colorado
Proposition 131 will appear on Colorado's November 2024 ballot. If passed, it would establish an "all-candidate primary" where the top four vote getters move on to a ranked-choice general election.
Idaho
Proposition 1 has been certified to appear on Idaho's November 2024 ballot. If passed, it would establish an "all-candidate primary" where the top four vote getters move on to a ranked-choice general election.
Nevada
Nevada voters will vote in November 2024 on whether they will use open primaries and ranked choice voting general elections (starting in 2026).
Voters already approved it in 2022, but it needs to pass in two consecutive ballot measures in order to amend the state constitution.
Washington D.C.
Initiative 83 will open up the District's primary elections to allow voters not registered with a political party to participate (~71,000 people). General elections will use ranked-choice voting where voters can rank up to 5 candidates.
https://www.rankedvote.co/guides/understanding-ranked-choice-voting/2024-rcv-on-the-ballot
Oh that's cute, you think the legislatures and judicial branches will allow mass adoption.
If states can override ballot measures regarding legal cannabis, and they have repeatedly, they can override this. Neither side of the duopoly has any interest in losing power.
Your point being that it's futile to cast a vote for something that won't come to fruition? Thanks for supporting the original point that voting for a third party candidate is a waste of your vote, and just helps Trump.
Electoralism is a joke in oligarchies, yes.
Low effort shitposts like this that ignore the point of the person you are responding to, that is what makes the internet a bad place.
If states can override ballot measures regarding legal cannabis, and they have repeatedly, they can override this.
Has that happened? I'm not doubting you, but overall the trend has overwhelmingly been in the direction of adoption. It's also just a bizarre example to choose since it seems to me like most of those initiatives have been successful and if anything have illustrated the connection between voting and noticeable change.
Which, come to think of it, it's probably why trolls don't use it anymore as an example of an issue pretend to care about when they search for reasons to tell people to disengage from democracy.
Folks in Mississippi passed an initiative for a fairly lax medical law in 2020. Some Karen mayor of one of the suburbs around the capital city used judicial chicanery to get it thrown out at the State Supreme Court, along with the ability of the populace to vote on ballot measures going forward.
I doubt that OP was debating you in good faith, but it did happen at least once in the last few years. The Republicans certainly didn't waste the opportunity to minimize the effects of democracy on their power.
Usually RCV is an initiative or referendum depending on how your state does it. In mine, it's just a separate issue on the back that we have to vote for, alongside things like "should we institute a tax for schools" or "should we approve building a new park". Entirely separate from voting for candidates for any position.
You said to not vote third party, so you can’t vote for rcv.
Not only did they literally not say that... actually no, let's just pause on this. This is so confused it's actually kind of amazing. Explaining how first past the post works is not saying don't vote third party. You could still like a third party the most independent of electoral concerns. And explaining the strategic reasoning for choosing one of the two major parties isn't the same as saying you "should" vote for them in a moral sense.
Voting to enact a ranked choice voting system isn't the same as voting for a third part. You could want rank choice voting even if you favored one of the two major parties but don't want them to lose narrow elections when they might be the winning coalition. You could hate the third party and still want rank choice voting. You can both support a third party and support rank choice voting and understand that they are two entirely separate things.
And I suppose the cherry on top is you referred to them as "you" like it was a single person in a comment chain where it's three comments by three different people.
Truly a magnificent multi-layered piece of confusion, chefs kiss, five stars, two thumbs up, etc etc.
Wait, why aren't you fixing the voting system? Yall clearly understand it's faults. Don't you believe in democracy?
"You dont get to vote how you want, and you will be reminded every election."
Clown country.
do you think that a half dozen lemmy users are capable of changing the voting system?
there have been some initiatives passed in some states, but thats only half the election. And the people in power benefit from a first past the post voting system, so transitioning out is slow work. It is possible, and it is happening, but there's not a magic button that says "swap to superior voting method" that a single socialist can press
because the system is working as designed and it's incentives keep a lot of people favoring it. but the alternative fast solutions everyone loves to wax philosphical about. well that movie always ends with this really weird wide angle shot of a field. theres this big mound of fresh dirt people are celebrating the victory around. but all our favorite anarchist charaters are missing and nobody can tell me why they got written out at the last minute.
This was an excellent breakdown of the American elections system, thank you
It varies by state election rules, but for me all the downballot third party candidates are eliminated in the primaries.
All local and state elections on my ballot are: Democrat v Republican, Democrat v Democrat, or Unopposed.
but for me all the downballot third party candidates are eliminated in the primaries.
What do you mean? A primary would be where Democrats narrow their choices to one nominee, and Republicans do, and third parties do and so on. You seem to be suggesting that primaries filter out third party candidates? Maybe I'm just missing something but my understanding would be that a primary would just be a way that a third party chooses a single nominee, same as the first two parties.
Top-two mixed primary regardless of partisan affiliation.
One primary ballot held, all candidates declare a party 'preference', all votes counted together. Top two go onto the general election.
Understood, you are exactly right about that. What you've described filters out third parties. I think most conceptions of ranked choice voting by contrast would give them more of a chance, but granted that's not how it works everywhere.
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