It makes perfect sense why we only have two parties while many countries in Europe have lots of parties. It’s not magic and it’s not because our parties are just so good at stopping third parties.
The reason we are like this is because our voting system punishes similar candidates who run against each other. This results in parties that are more like coalitions, each made up of various factions that would be separate parties in a better system, who run a primary to pick one candidate to send forth, so that they don’t cannibalize each other in the general election.
The bad part is that even the primaries generally have the same flawed first-past-the-post voting scheme, so similar candidates often have to strategically drop out or not run at all.
This voting system desperately needs to be fixed. But you can’t fix it by simply acting like we just have to decide to have more parties, nor can you fix it by voting third party and screwing over one of the parties. I think this idea of voting third party in this election is appealing to some because it makes you feel like you’re doing something to fix it. You’re not.
In my view the best hope of fixing this is pushing for election reform locally and winning over communities to the idea. There are some parts of the country with better voting systems in place. We should build on that.
It makes perfect sense why we only have two parties while many countries in Europe have lots of parties. It’s not magic and it’s not because our parties are just so good at stopping third parties.
The reason we are like this is because our voting system punishes similar candidates who run against each other. This results in parties that are more like coalitions, each made up of various factions that would be separate parties in a better system, who run a primary to pick one candidate to send forth, so that they don’t cannibalize each other in the general election.
The bad part is that even the primaries generally have the same flawed first-past-the-post voting scheme, so similar candidates often have to strategically drop out or not run at all.
This voting system desperately needs to be fixed. But you can’t fix it by simply acting like we just have to decide to have more parties, nor can you fix it by voting third party and screwing over one of the parties. I think this idea of voting third party in this election is appealing to some because it makes you feel like you’re doing something to fix it. You’re not.
In my view the best hope of fixing this is pushing for election reform locally and winning over communities to the idea. There are some parts of the country with better voting systems in place. We should build on that.