AbouBenAdhemTrying to build viable third parties by voting for them in presidential elections is like trying to build a third door in your house by repeatedly walking into the wall where you want the door to be.
metaStaticexcept that you could end up with a 3rd entrance by doing that ... eventually
No you won’t.
But if you put door in while building the house (local and primary elections) you’ll have installed it at the right time.
But if you put door in while building the house (local and primary elections) you’ll have installed it at the right time.
OpenStarsEspecially if you ram that not-door long, hard, deep, and strong enough, really get up in there and penetrate that wall. If you run out of steam you could even switch to an electric appliance, but in that case be gentle (though not too gentle…).
Um… I’m not sure where this is going, and at this point I’m afraid to continue? 😔
I'm here for it
Vote me again, daddy!
I think you’d have brain damage way before you get to that point
Depends on how cheap the drywall is.
You may avoid brain damage, but your get cancer form the dust on the way through.
You’ll get a boatload of spoiler effect elections until people start voting tactically again. Third parties need to start locally and not participate in the presidential elections for a long time.
There is a path to voter reform by creating hung parliament and require voter reform in a coalition agreement. Once dominant running for governor or a senator becomes possible.
And even if the candidate wins, then what? You have no say in Congress. It’s the House of Reps and the Senate that passes legislation.
Do you apply this same logic to Trump winning the election or are presidents only this powerless when they have a D next to their name and are being criticized for supporting abhorrent legislation?
What? Trump was the leader of the party and had a cult following through and through. You’re making no sense.
I’m not making sense? You just stated that congress has all the power while now arguing that Trump would have all the power because he’s “the leader of the party.” That doesn’t make sense as you can’t have it both ways unless you’re just trying to spread misinformation.
Seriously? Ok one more attempt. Trump is the leader of the republican party. The people in the republican party selected him as their leader. I don’t know how to make it any clearer but I’ll try with a tiny fib: Trump is the republican party. The republican party is Trump.
Trump tells his party “hey write up this legislation, do it because I’m the leader of the party that you are in”. Notice that part “because I’m the leader of the party that you are in”. That’s not “because I am president”, it’s because “because I’m the leader of the party that you are in”. And by and large, the republican party will do that. They will listen to their party leader (the one they selected) and write up the legislation, try to pass it in the House of reps, try to pass it in the senate, and then it will land on Trumps desk.
To be more specific, the party will meet, they will discuss what they want to do, listening heavily to what the president/leader wants to do because it was his “vision” for america that got them elected, then write up legislation.
A third party candidate does not have party members in the house or senate that will do that.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, you have some reading to do. I think I’m out.
sgibson5150I’m going to hold my nose and vote for Kamala but I won’t shame people who can’t bring themselves to do it.
And this criticism of ‘the greens only show up every 4 years’ is in bad faith. The greens run in other elections as well, you just only hear about the presidential elections because that’s the only time they get some media attention.
This list has a bunch of school board members, city councillors, even a mayor on it. They do run in local elections, and even win sometimes.
And this criticism of ‘the greens only show up every 4 years’ is in bad faith.
No, it’s really not. The Mayor of Galesburg, IL, a town of 30.000 is the highest office any green politician holds in the US. This is fucking ridiculous.
By their own admission, only 130 Greens are currently in office in highly influential positions such as Zoning Board of Appeals Alternate or Cemetery Trust Fund Committee. This party is a fucking joke. And that’s the party whose presidential candidate accepts an invitation from Putin.
Noooo you must enjoy voting for our designated ghoul and voice your full throated support or else it’s basically a vote for Trump.
It’s really astounding to see how quickly Democratic sycophants mimic the MAGA folks they mock on the right. These are the same people that were telling those of us who wanted Biden to drop out that we were all secret Trump supporters paid by the Russians even though it was clear he was going to lose.
I’m “lucky” enough to live in a state where my vote doesn’t matter at all. I’m completely free to not vote for genocide. What an awesome “democracy”.
PugJesusI’m going to hold my nose and vote for Kamala but I won’t shame people who can’t bring themselves to do it.
It must be nice, being privileged enough to see who wins this election as a fashion choice instead of something that will affect your life.
Primary elections are how parties change. Primary elections are how the Republican party became what it is today. They are often the highest-leverage vote you can cast if you’re in a solid district.
Yup. People don’t realize there is already a not horrible approximation of runoff voting that still avoids the spoiler effect.
And just look at what happened when Sanders realized that. He went from being a meme about how nobody watches C-SPAN to one of the more influential politicians on the Left.
Remind me who won in 2016? How do you think all those Bernie supporters felt about the election that was still very much influenced by FPTP dynamics.
More voters went from Hillary Clinton to John McCain in 2008 than went from Sanders to Trump in 2016 -Source
SpaceCowboyWell I’d say it’s still pretty bad with the super delegates and such. But yeah it’s runoff system of sorts and people should pay more attention to it.
But a lot of the “system is broken” angst comes from people being not happy over who the majority of people vote for. But that’s just democracy, baby.
But the Electoral College, yeah that shit is broken.
Primaries are still subject to spoiler effects and such.
In my very blue state this year where the top two in the primary go on to the general, there was a local position which had a whole bunch of well qualified Democrats vs just a couple of Republicans. (Incumbent not running)
The dem vote was split enough that we very nearly had just the two Republicans in the general. Like less than 50 votes away.
And there are scenarios under runoff voting where similar can occur (e.g. two seats, 2 right wing, 4 left wing) and is where the “election theory” aspect of things that certain folk are still bitching about (because that is the most important thing to have happened in the past 8 years, clearly). The party needs to take the results of the primary and downselect who actually runs to avoid splitting their own vote.
No voting system is perfect. But people should really understand what we have and what their NEED improves and fails to improve rather than just insisting “new is better”.
Too bad the dems skipped the primary and just anointed their candidate.
Primary elections aren’t democratic either (see party delegates). I feel like people who say this are rarely politically engaged in their communities. Same with the people who say to get involved in local city politics to make change.
Ultimately you’re supporting a facist system that is historically atrocious and currently financially supporting a genocide almost singlehandedly but go ahead and keep telling people that’s the best way to maintain some semblance of moral character is to vote in this sham.
Third parties are mathematically impossible until we ditch first past the post voting:
We need our vote to be a list, not a checkbox.
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This is the way. It is possible and unlikely to have a third party win under the right conditions, like with how the Republican Party became a national party after Lincoln was elected as a third party candidate. But ultimately there will always only be two parties with the outdated FPTP voting method. If only George Washington knew about and pushed for a better voting system than FPTP.
Norah (pup/it/she)I don’t think they really existed yet in his era. You’ve got to remember that Australia, a much younger country, invented the secret ballot. It was known as the “Australian Ballot” for a long time.
Better systems existed but to your point, they were not well known.
Leaders today, with access to Wikipedia if not researchers with Nobel prizes, do NOT have this excuse.
Well yes, obviously. The issue with today is that the incumbency of the system makes it hard to change
I don’t think they really existed yet in his era
In 1294-1621 the election of the Pope used Approval voting. Venice also used it.
Australia, a much younger country, invented the secret ballot
The election of the Pope required secret ballot since 1621. And the concept existed since Ancient Greece and was used in elections and courts of Roman Republic.
IMO, it’s not the full story to say the Republican party was a third party that year. The previous opposition to the Democrats had a rift and came apart. I think you are underselling what “the right conditions” are. This is more like a new party filling a void.
That year the Democrats themselves (regressives as this was well before Southern Strategy) split into two. Running both a candidate for “states’ rights” style slavery and another for “fuck you, slavery everywhere” style slavery.
All it takes is a bunch of celebrities endorsing third parties and it’s done. At some point in your lifetime you will probably see a third party winning in the usa and it will simply happen with media and celebrities redirecting everyone vote. It happens all the time in other countries: people get tired of the local rulers and to keep protests and disorder at bay the government through mass media redirects attentions to a new and fresh party that already got bribed and corrupted by the ruling class.
FPTP is not real democracy for this reason.
I like CGP Grey and all, but power dynamics is an important aspect of poltics. An aspect he completely ignores in favour of spreadsheet thinking.
Yeah so proportional representation systems kinda suck. Israel has one and it ended up with a conservative party making concessions to far right crazies to form a coalition. Sure minorities are in the parliament, but they have zero power because the only thing that matters is the backroom negotiations between parties to form a coalition.
The biggest problem with FPTP is the name. Really we should call it a community representation system (which is what it is) and call proportional representation system a “party coalition” system, which is what it actually is. In a party coalition system the negotiations between party leaders to form coalitions is all that matters, everyone else is just there to fill seats which are owned by the parties.
In a community representation system each seat is own by a representative of the community who can vote against their party or leave their party. Parties are incentivized to keep the community leaders happy or they could lose seats.
If you want third parties, it’s better to go with a ranked choice system. That gives people more choice over who represents their community, and allow them to have compromise options in case their top choice doesn’t get enough votes. You don’t actually have to give parties full ownership of the seats (making them redundant) to have more options.
I also generally prefer a Condorcet Method (ranked choice, single winner) over mixed-member-proportional, but either one would be a massive improvement over our current system.
I’ll take Approval voting, even.
An aspect he completely ignores in favour of spreadsheet thinking.
That’s bc he explains each concept mostly in isolation of others, leaving other concepts for separate videos themselves. But in e.g. Rules for Rulers, he very much discusses power dynamics. And I thought he had another one - in addition to the more mathematical one - illustrating FPTP using the animal kingdom, where technically people might assume one thing to be true, but based on power dynamics in practice it never is.
So watch Rules for Rulers yet if you haven’t - it may change literally everything about your understanding, as it did mine.
Edit - references:
rules for Rulers, outlining necessary considerations involved with any path forward - i.e. it works against anyone and especially those who ignore this principle
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Yeah I’ve seen all of these videos before. Problem is, these aren’t isolated concepts. There are very specific power dynamics within a proportional representation system that aren’t the same as the power dynamics in a community representation system. He doesn’t go into those details in the rules for rulers videos, only the broad concept of democracy is mentioned. He only goes into a some math on the FPTP video but doesn’t discuss the differences power dynamics for those different systems.
Basically in a community representation system (called FPTP by people trying to make it sound arbritrary an unfair) the power flows up from the communities. In a proportional representation system the power flows down from the party leadership.
Considering the “rules for rulers” video it seems CGP Grey thinks all government has to be top down, so he doesn’t seem to have even considered the possibility of power flowing upwards from a community. This is what happens in the system he thinks is bad, so I’d say he hasn’t adequately considered everything about the subject.
We don’t actually elect rulers we elect people to represent our communities. Sure they’re usually part of a party but because we elect representatives, not parties, that representative has the option of leaving the party if it serves the interests of the community they represent. Since parties can lose seats between elections they have to listen to the the elected representatives (community leaders) to avoid losing seats. People in a community put pressure on their representative, the reps but pressure on the party leadership, power flows upwards from the people.
Proportional representation only seems better if you think as CGP does and believe we can only be ruled over and we need to find a better way to select rulers. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of representative democracy.
He seems to think like a mathematician or philosopher and enjoyed considering each of those items separately, in isolation from one another - plus as a YouTuber, he needs to release moar content, moar often, so multiple videos helps him maintain his existence that way as opposed to a single, larger video, especially on a complex topic that since it is >1 minute long, the vast majority of people are not going to watch anyway.:-P
But anyway, if he’s already mathematically proved certain things about e.g. ranked-choice, and how it differs from whatever else, then why should he bother going further into the weeds, that the vast majority of people don’t care the tiniest bit about? After all, a look at basically every election ever, especially recently, reveals that the common people know next to nothing about how the system works. e.g. people voting against Hillary Clinton in 2016, either by voting 3rd party, or switching to the “Never Hillary” movement to actively vote for Trump, but then being shocked - shocked I tell you! SHOOKETH! - when he won. So if we can’t figure out that 1+1=2, then differential calculus, much less simple algebra, is going to be beyond us (collectively) as well.
So, I took it as not that he refused to consider those other possibilities, just that he was focusing his description to explain one thing in isolation of other concepts, as much as possible at least. e.g. regardless of whether he should have been talking about (or naming it as) FPTP, that’s what he was aiming to do, so that’s what he did.
About the Rules for Rulers I think similarly as above but also: the “rulers” there aren’t necessarily the ones in charge, as is true for the monarchies & totalitarian regimes, but rather the “voters” who put those people in charge. In that formulation, why should the non-voters (e.g. literal children, people who are mentally disabled, etc.) have power over & above that of the voters, i.e. the responsible “rulers”?
Although that is exactly what always ends up happening… eventually, in any such system. Imagine a person who votes, individually, but then also is responsible for gerrymandering a district of lets say a million people. So they should have had power equal to 1/1000000, though instead they overturned the decisions of those million people and single-handedly altered the election, FAR in excess of their individual voting power. They cannot overturn the collective weight of a full million voters all speaking with a single unified voice… but they could make a vote for e.g. 1/10th vs. 9/10ths end up with the former rather than the latter being in charge, which is pretty damn powerful (it doesn’t have to be “perfect”, it just has to work - possibly in conjunction with other things like removing certain classes of people as voters). So here, irl rather than in pure theory in isolation of irl considerations, “rulers” end up NOT being the voters, but rather those in charge b/c they are willing to cheat the system, to keep themselves in charge or at least others exactly like them, using non-voting schemes. i.e. it is the True Rulers™ who are “in charge” rather than the voting ones, who were put into place by non-voting systems, so the entire system gets turned upon its head and does if not 100% then still effectively the opposite of what it was originally intended to - that is, it ignores/overturns votes rather than uses them to determine the outcomes of elections.
So if we, the aspiring rulers i.e. voters, wish to actually rule, then we need to know what we are up against. And if others cheat… well then that does not mean that we have to as well, but we should at least be aware that that is what is going on!?! To some degree at least, even if not 100%, hence it is “biased” and “unfair” and “rigged”. That is what I took from those videos, collectively.
It seems you are mixing the concepts of voting systems and candidate selection. FPP nor FPP should not sound scary. As a voting systems, FPP works well enough more often than many want to admit. The name just describes it in more detail: either First Preference Plurality.
Every voting system is as bottom-up or top-down as the candidate selection process. The voting system itself doesn’t really affect whether it is top down or bottom up. Requiring approval/voting from the current rulers would be top-down. Only requiring ten signatures on a community petition is more bottom up.
The voting systems don’t care about the candidate selection process. Some require precordination for a “party”, but that could also be a party of 1. A party of 1 might not be able to get as much representation as one with more people: but that’s also the case for every voting system that selects the same number of candidates.
Voting systems don’t even need to be used for representation systems. If a group of friends are voting on where to eat, one problem might be selecting the places to vote on, but that’s before the vote. With the vote, FPP might have 70% prefer pizza over Indian food, but the Indian food vote might still win because the pizza voters had another first choice. Having more candidates often leads to minority rule/choice, and that’s not very good for food choice nor community representation.
community representation system
lmao. clown.
Yeah so proportional representation systems kinda suck. Israel has one
If you’re going to use a genocidal cult as your counter-example to democracy, why not just talk about the nazis?
Switzerland has a good system, just copy it.
(Yes, not the same country, size difference and so on and on but its still a thousand times better than the US system)
In Australia government funding is distributed to political parties based on the number of first preference votes they get as well so even if your first choice doesn’t get in, you still helped them by putting them first.
x00zaYeah, even getting a party 1 seat can be great. They are required to be heard. They can raise issues which the other parties must address.
Who’s we?
The working class I guess? Certainly no one with power.
Americans. “We” already have preferential voting.
Math doesn’t decide what people vote, they are free to vote anything they want. Parties don’t automatically side with each others because another is most likely to win. This video is rooted in the mindset that politics and elections are a horse race between left and right.
What’s preventing third parties from winning it’s not math but the propaganda and the power of the red and blue party. The ruling parties didn’t become this powerful mathematically. Over decades and centuries the ruling class paved their way and ensured their power with violence and repression.
If third parties aren’t mathematically impossible, where are all members if third party during midterms? Local elections? The work it takes to make real lasting change is done down ballot, where are they at those times? Why do they only creep up during presidential races? The above analogy may not be perfect, but it’s pretty damned close… but we could also compare third party to all the lazy animals in the story of the little red hen…
The government spend billions of dollars to make sure third parties are nowhere to be seen. This post being evidence. You got a fascist party and one involved in a genocide yet you see warnings about not voting for anyone else.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of money to run for city council, local officials, sherif, alderman. It takes a bit, but not millions to run for state government positions. Are you saying the federal government is quashing local and state third parties? That is where you make your sweeping electoral reforms for federal elections. Why don’t we ever hear about them making moves in those races? Where are they when I go to vote for my city council? My county commissioners? Are you telling me the federal government is coming down and removing them from ballots?
That’s a pretty serious accusation, and I’d love to see some sources on that, because I’m with you all the way if that’s the case.
But when you’ve got someone who was wined and dined by an impotent dictator, and a half dozen of his cronies and yes men coming in and trying to split the vote for the best chance of preventing a take over by the impotent dictator’s choice clown… and then suddenly you’ve got people toting her banner when she’s been largely silent the past 3.5 years… it kind of makes you wonder, or it should… assuming you’ve got more than 3 braincells reenacting the DVD screen saver.
Why don’t we ever hear about them making moves in those races?
Because mass media are own by government and rich people. If you try to compete with them they take you down
I see a few bits of information about it happening at the presidential election level, but I’m not finding anything at the state and local level. Can you provide some sources on that?
There’s a caveat: That statement only applies to a house that’s designed to only have 2 viable doors.