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?
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Less money in politics. Not only the citizen united bullshit, but individual contributions too. In the US, the maximum personal amount someone can give is around 175 000$. In Canada, it’s 3300$. In the province of Quebec, it’s 500$. I know only a handful of people who make that much per year and I don’t know of anybody who can afford to **give it all to a political party**.
The 2020 election cost around 14B$. I don’t have the breakdown, but it’s roughly 7B$ per party. It’s not realistic to raise 7B$ without… “very motivated” backers, which is something emerging parties are extremely unlikely to get. 7B$ is 40 000 at maximum contribution. In a country of 330M people, it’s not that much. With Canada rules, you’d need over 2.1M donors at maximum contribution.
In Canada, when you get a certain threshold of votes, your party gets financing per vote and other benefits. I voted for losing parties in the past, because every vote helps. It didn’t tip anything, but it did more than “nothing at all”.
There’s also some kind of ideology shift, or education, that needs to be done for those parties to succeed. I’d imagine a newer party to be more to the left than the existing choices, promoting more social policies. Unfortunately, socialism has been demonized for a long time in the US, mostly as a word though. There’s a ton of very successful social programs in the US that many refuse to call as such, like medicaid, medicare, food stamps and all other transfer of wealth from the government to the people. This would be for a leftist party, but other conditions would apply for other ideologies. I just assumed so because the dems and the gop are respectively the right and the far right in other countries, which leaves a large gap in the balance
A political revolution like Bernie sanders talks about. I forget what year it was but the liberal party got more than 15 % of the people’s votes in a poll and that should have have got them in to the debates but they just ignored it they make these rules to keep their seats the Dems and republicans worked together to keep it a 2 party system
If you participate in the primaries then you don’t only have 2 choices. You only have 2 choices if you wait til the very end of the process to participate.
You’d need two parties too stupid to figure out how to win elections, and the party in power. Pretty quick the two losing parties would negotiate a barely tolerable platform. The party in power would figure out how much they’d have to compromise to attract just enough of the splinter parties members, and then there’d be two parties with both having a chance of winning.
TL;DR: We have two parties because third parties sell out for a seat at the table.
The US has always had more than 2 choices for president. However, it is impractical and illogical because both parties are big tent parties. Back in the day there’d be like 5 different candidates that would get significant percentages and the one with the highest won. Take Lincoln for example, he only won around 40% of the vote.
Nothing. I expect the GOP to fracture after (or during) this election cycle. By ’26 there’s going to 2 to 4 new parties with enough name recognition to satisfy anyone’s criteria for a viable “3rd party”.
This will mean some big gains for democrats as tickets get split for 4-6 years… though the chaos will motivate some more alternative-party activity on the left as well.
By ’32, things will be almost unrecognizable. But re-consolidation will start happening after that.
In most contested general elections, there are already more than two choices: Republican, Democrat, maybe a libertarian, and a number of independents. Some states recognize even more parties.
About $10,000,000,000,000. That would probably be the cost to buy off the existing assholes in the legislature, pay off the lobbyists, and get a reliable internet encrypted ID method that would be tamper resistant. AND – it would require a codifying of penalties to anyone who interferes.
BUT –
Here’s the rub – Let’s assume a voting population of 150M eligible citizens. A voting holiday, and instant tabulation. You vote, you see the results online, instantly.
There would be mechanisms in place, to avoid vote buying, dead voters, repeat voters and all the typical vote scams. Penalties would be SEVERE. Like, maybe exile or something.
ANYWAY –
The vote is to legalize abortion, ban guns, whatever your personal litmus test is…
And, you vote. And you LOSE.
Now what?
It was legit, it was legal and it was FINAL. Like, FINAL final. Like, no more abortions – EVER. Or legalized abortion. FOREVER?
Or all the guns are banned. ALL OF THEM.
What do you expect the losers to do? If it was an overwhelming majority, you shrug and go “Oh, well.”
But what if it was only ONE vote. I mean, that’s the idea, right? One person, one vote.
Are you still going to be ‘happy’ about the choice made by the WINNERS?
Yeah, voting is a complete scam.
Figure out the best thing to do, the ethical thing, the moral thing.
Then do THAT. Without votes. Just do no evil.
Just start making voting third party the cool thing especially if you live in a heavily blue or red state.
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