You know what thread I'm talking about.
Edit: Sorry, I saw so many fellow bears there that I assumed everyone knew about it. Since there's been a few requests, here's the link.
You know what thread I'm talking about.
Edit: Sorry, I saw so many fellow bears there that I assumed everyone knew about it. Since there's been a few requests, here's the link.
You shouldn't have to have only 2 choices. I think the two party system is the reason America is becoming so polarised. A loss for the other party is a win for the home team.
It would be great if you had a multitude of parties where you could pick the one that you actually agree with. Rather than the one you hate the least.
Or just one
The correct one
A few European countries do this (as well as others), and it does seem to work much better than a first past the post, but it's not completely incorruptible. For a prescient example, see Israel (the Knesset).
Yes the UK has FPTP and it has the same problems as the US.
In most of Europe there are coalition governments. It is also highly flawed, for example it can take ages to form a coalition. I think Belgium was without a government for over a year (which de facto means the old one stays in power with a few minor restrictions). In fact it's a great way for a government to become untouchable, they stay in power after they've stepped down!
But anyway, I still think it's the best of both options. If there's anything better I would be interested though.
I'm not an electoralist in the slightest, but holy shit if there were even some slightly relevant third parties that would be great.
Every day
looks like a utopia compared to us since both NDP, BQ, and the Greens aren't totally irrelevant.
The problem is we live under a system completely dominated by the interests of a single class, a dictatorship of capital, and the state reflects that. Under this system, any political party will ultimately be nothing than a mouthpiece for some faction of capitalists or a release valve for discontent with this system by subsuming revolutionary energy into impotent, declawed social movements. It doesn't matter if you have one party or eighty, you will never be allowed to vote away the economic hegemony, only fighting over social issues that do not threaten the stability of the system (not that these social issues aren't also important, but ultimately the investors that own the economy could care less if, say, gay marriage is legal so long as they can continue to own everything).
Movements towards things like ranked-choice voting, while not terrible ideas in of themselves, don't solve this problem. At best you'll get them but severely declawed to prop up the legitimacy of the state, and at worst they'll beat you down until you stop demanding even table scraps and accept that better things aren't possible. And even taking a lesser-evil approach to electoralism, like deciding that if you're going to live in a brutal imperialist shithole then you might as well live in one where gay people aren't hunted like dogs in the streets, inevitably reveals that the lesser evil rarely is as we've seen with the Democrats completely folding on anything even resembling a fight for reproductive rights or preventing LGBT pogroms while still continuing to support genocides the world over.