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The Strange Decline of the Pax Americana
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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politics
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I've explained the spoiler effect of Durvurger's Law and linked to great resources, but again, under First Past the Post, a vote for a third party is almost indistinguishable from a vote for the ideologically opposite main party candidate.
In 1992, Ross Perot ran the single most successful third party campaign in US history. If he had not run, George H. W. Bush would have likely been reelected.
In 2000, Ralph Nader ran an average performing campaign and scored just over 1% of the vote in Florida, and that alone made sure that George W. Bush was elected.
Because under First Past the Post, a vote for a third party candidate is a not just a wasted vote, it actually helps your least liked candidate win. Because if you had held your nose and voted for the lesser of two evils, the lesser would have won.
Again, if you want actual change, it's only possible through electoral reform. Hell, even the stupid Forward Party that you linked to is pushing for electoral reform, because that's the only chance Yang has of being elected to anything outside of maybe a mayoral race.
I personally recommend this group. The Equal Vote Coalition.
Their site explains the spoiler effect in pictures. (calling it vote-splitting)
You answered none of the clarifications I asked for. You just repeated the same things you already said. Since your answer doesn't address the questions I asked you in a clear way, I will.
Third parties and Voting Reform both harm the existing parties by promoting more competition. That is good for the American people and democracy.
You are trying to claim third parties are bad because they split the vote. Splitting the vote is otherwise known as people voting for what they believe in. That is in no way a bad thing. It is how democracy is supposed to work. No party or person is entitled to your vote they have to earn it. It is not bad advice to support a political party or candidates that supports changing the FPTP system. In fact it is exactly what you are arguing for doing.
Third parties on a presidential scale is entirely beside the point to both changing the voting system and the Forward party. If you read through my replies you would see that Forward is starting by focusing locally on the state level so the anecdotes about third party presidential candidates are irrelevant.
There are hundreds of thousands of elected positions in the US and the majority are uncontested. That is what is bad for America. Restricting peoples choices down to at most 2 viewpoints is the problem. And the solution is electing politicians who will work to prioritize voting reform like Forward candidates.
I have no idea why you are calling a group that is pushing for the similar policies you are stupid. Seems pretty counterintuitive to me.
Their supporters. You've not been reading.
And vote splitting is fucking horrible. A vote for a third party under First Past the Post is a vote against your own interests. Even at the local level. If the election features more than two candidates, the majority will often get screwed over by FPtP.
That's why it's so important to change the voting system to one that doesn't actively punish you for supporting who you want. STAR is great for that. It's the best voting system designed to date. It's also supported by the Forward Party on the front page of the site.
The other options are still better than the horrible option of FPtP. That said, I'm not a fan of RCV (Ranked Choice, aka, Instant Runnoff). RCV shares many of the same problems as FPtP while not actually fixing the vote splitting issue. It also introduces some other wrinkles that are just bad.
Did you not read that the majority of local elections are uncontested? How is having another choice other than the default party bad?
They are not screwed over by FPTP but by the parties and people who benefit and refuse to change the existing system.
That assumes that the major parties have your best interest at heart. They have their donors best interests at heart. You are just someone they have to pretend to please to get you to choose them over the other team.
I never said anything against STAR voting or argued against vote splitting. I simply challenged your assumption that vote splitting is harmful.
Vote splitting is just a way of describing the phenomenon where it is harder to start a third party in a FPTP system.
I reject the idea that vote splitting should have any effect on how you cast your vote. That is essentially censoring your own vote and your own voice.
You misspelled impossible. See Durvurger's Law.
See video, after video, after video.
And a load of different sites.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Duvergers-law
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/why-just-two-parties-a-voting-game-to-illustrate-duvergers-law/31740530FD6AE83819083E3AF956BFFC
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199207800.001.0001/acref-9780199207800-e-382
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-387-09720-6_5
We can then divert into Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, but that's a bit outside this conversation.
The point being, Durvurger laid this all out. Plurality voting will strongly preference two-party dominance.
As to local politics. Again, you run into the two party system. I will admit that it's not impossible to win as an independent in local races, but the fact that we as a species are very team orientated makes it harder.
No you are misrepresenting it.
From the first sentence of wikipedia
Tend does not mean impossible.
Heck, you even contradicted yourself. First you say its impossible. Next, you say it will strongly preference two party dominance. It can't be both.
You are also conveniently ignoring that most local races only have one candidate. That makes said 'law' irrelevant.
All you are doing is repeating the same thing over and over again even if it is in no way relevant to the discussion. You are clearly just arguing for the sake of arguing. Therefore, I will disengage.
It's interesting that you continuously link-drop with no ability to speak to the subject beyond "just trust me bro, watch this video, it says it all".
It's the behavior I'd expect of the flat earthers and QAnon folk.
As a side-note, you are aware those videos do nothing but restate the same baseless nonsense in different ways, right?
I explained it several times, then linked to videos, and websites, and scholarly articles that all explain it better because the guy I'm arguing with doesn't seem to want to understand.
Hell, his own preferred third party makes voting reform a priority, because otherwise they cannot win.