I know we technically have more than two choices, but what would need to change for it to simply be 1) person A, 2) person B, or 3) throwaway vote.
And maybe there are multiple avenues?
In: Other
Ranked choice voting like Australia would help people express their preferences. Like you could vote third party to send a strong signal that you’re unhappy with both main candidates without making your vote meaningless. Which eventually could lead to more parties having a real vhance
Moving away from First Past the Post voting; it inevitably leads to two party systems and increased polarization. Plenty of countries use various vote counting/allocation methods, some more complex than others, depending on the outcome they aim for – more representation, more minority representation, ensuring no wasted votes etc etc etc.
Like the other comment said, ranked choice voting. The issue is that no one who actually has the power to make this happen wants it to happen because they profit from the two party system. You’ll notice that most propaganda nowadays is just saying bad things about the opponent. Vilifying one enemy is a lot easier than vilifying a dozen of them.
Don’t make the outcome an all-or-nothing situation. If party B got 40% of votes, they should have 40% of the seats in the government. This would let even smaller parties get a foot through the door. Also, absolish the electoral college. Getting the majority of votes and losing the election is an absurdity.
No corporate donations via pacs. No pacs. Only citizens can donate to candidates directly. Even the p,aging field.
There are a few things in my view that would need to happen for this to become a reality:
1: you need a political party strategically centered between the two parties in regards to left vs. right. Most American third parties run to the political far right or left. Not only are their views not mainstream enough but they lose votes as Election Day closes because people see themselves effectively helping the other side win.
2: the party should start by winning local and state, or at least, congressional level seats. Going straight for the presidency with virtually nobody in elected office is a pipe dream. They need to develop a formidable coalition in congress in order to show a centrist vision for what how they might govern the presidency.
3: they need to curate a well-known candidate early. Most centrist candidates have ended up floating a run at the last minute when they see both candidates are weak overall. Joe Manchin considered a half-assed run this time around. It never works. The presidency isn’t something you casually go for.
We’d need a parliamentary system that assigns proportional representation in government vs. current system. With first past the post elections, the system is biased toward big tent parties while parliamentary parties result in coalitions of multiple parties with similar views but not complete alignment on policy/views.
You need a voting system with transferable vote property.
Whether it’s just a single transferable vote or the whole ranked choice voting.
The thing is that no politician in power wants to destroy the system keeping him there.
There are a number of voting systems that exist that drastically help reduce the spoiler problem that exists in [First Past the Post](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting) (FPTP) voting, which is the problem you are asking about. The first three I’ll describe work well with single-winner positions.
[Ranked Choice Voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting) (RCV) is probably the best known of these, and is used in some elections. The basic idea here is that voters rank the candidates in order of preference and ballots are counted against the highest ranked. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the lowest candidate is eliminated and all ballots counted for them are recounted using the next choice on the ballot. This process is repeated until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote or there are exactly two candidates that each got exactly 50% (which results in a dead tie). It still has some mathematical issues that cause a spoiler effect.
[Approval Voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting) is another option, and is the most similar to FPTP. With this, instead of voting for a single candidate, voters vote for any candidate you approve of winning. The single candidate with the most votes wins the election. This system also works very well for elections with multiple identical positions, such as is common with city consuls – and its often basically used for elections of that type.
[STAR Voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting) is somewhat similar to RCV, but you rank each candidate with a number of stars. For the first round of counting, the total number of stars each candidate got is tallied, and the top two candidates move to the second round. In the second round, each ballot is counted only for the candidate, of the two that moved on, with the highest stars on that ballot. This system basically runs an open primary election at the same time as the general election.
There are also a class of options known as [Proportional Representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation) that only work in cases where there are a lot of similar positions, such as the United States House of Representatives has. All of these require at large elections. That is, all positions are filled rather than having any districts or other breakdowns, which is a win in its own as they remove any possibility of gerrymandering. Basically, the House of Representatives would be filled on a nation-wide basis rather than each state having districts that get their own representative.
[Party List](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_list) is the simplest of these systems to understand. For the closed version, which is easier to understand, each political party would submit a list of candidates, and voters vote for one of the lists. Candidates are elected from the lists based on the proportional number of votes that list got. If Democrats get 55% of the vote, they get 55% of the seats. The main question for this is how to decide which parties get to submit a list for the ballot for any given election – the ballot would likely only show the party name. There are also questions as to how to round the numbers, given that its unlikely the vote will split on a perfect multiple of the seat count.
[Single Transferable Vote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote) is another fairly simple version, though its not quite as solid. For the voter, the voting looks the same as RCV. During counting, however, ballots cast for winners or eliminated candidates will be reassigned to lower candidates based on rules. The end result is very similar to an Open Party List, but using RCV rather than single voting for each ballot.
For more parties you would need the two parties various wings to explode. Each party is made up of a variety of voters, who are willing to come together to hash out a platform. Many of them have a few key positions, but they’re willing to go along with the strengths a large national party brings to the table.
Both parties are called big tents for a reason, they encompass a lot of issues and positions. Think of them more as a bunch of dwarfs in a trench coat.
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