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If you dont vote third party this is pretty much what you sound like.
@freemo First off I want to apologize if this is impolite, I just joined and I still really don't understand how everything works. I have seen many posts by you and I appreciate your thoughts and I would just love to get your perspective.
I want to say thank you for your mindset and not being focused on parts that have nothing to do with the conversation. There is one thing I would love for you to expound on if you feel willing.
A while ago you made a post about voting third party and arguments against don't make sense. But I want to ask how you rationalize this in a first past the post system? While I must succumb to say taking a passive role in life means you technically are having the moral high ground, since you could be advocating for a person that is the least evil out of all people, if you take a look at the perspective of your actual output in life by means of choices and their power, does that not start to falter?
Quite honestly assuming a vote means anything individually is sort of nonsense to begin with with how many people vote, but couldn't it be argued that a vote for a third party means even less than two in the system that we have? Wouldn't effort be better spent changing the system in order to have third part votes mean something? And in the meantime make a vote where your power decreases the amount of evil in the future?
Am I wrong in my thinking for this? I would very much appreciate your perspective. Thank you for your time and I wish you a nice day.
@MikeX I see nothing rude about this line of questioning. Challenging my opinion or me challenging yours, if done respectfully, is what QOTO is all about. So by all means these sorts of comments are welcome.
So there are many levels to this question and many ways I could see someone determining their vote..
1) The goal may be to enact change, to ensure your vote has the greatest positive impact on the world
2) It may simply come down to morals. Someone may refuse to support someone or something evil, even if that lack of support may cause a greater evil to rise to power.
I personally subscribe to #1, I don't see #2 as a valid motivation.
So there are many levels I can pick apart #1 on but instead of laying all of them on you at once let me start with one thought experiment, and i can add more points after we address each one so I dont overload the conversation.
The whole argument for not voting third party is the idea that they have a very small chance of winning, ergo its a wasted vote unless you vote for the one of the options that is more likely.
How exactly does that help anything though, and where is the cut off?
Lets put it another way... Lets presume for a second Republicans decided to split their party into two seperate parties with almost identical ideals but with different candidates each year (this almost happened this year in a sense with a proposal to pick a republican candidate other than Trump).. so now you have Republican party A, Republican B, and Democrats. Now lets say the past 4 years Either Republican Party A, or B have won and democrats have consistently lost.
Am I now obligated to only vote for republicans simply because they became the most popular 2 choices? Why? What good am I causing by limiting myself in that way?
In the short of it, how are you effectiving any more positive change than normal by restricting your vote to "the top 2"? I see of absolutely no logical reason to suggest making that vote is advantageous to a more positive outcome than third party.
@freemo So I believe I understand your point. Of the premises you give, I personally subscribe to #1 as well, so I am personally fine just discussing from that premise.
I want to say I do see your point with looking at it as a feeling of obligation, and I want to say I by no means mean it that way. In addition I believe the argument is not that they have a very small chance of winning, but instead the voting system, specifically of the US itself is flawed, and I believe this is where a lot of the difficulty in voting third party comes from. The design of the voting system itself causes a third party to become irrelevant. For a more in depth explanation as to how take a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
but essentially having a winner take all system with only one priority of vote causes two general parties to evolve which, whenever challenged with another party, would only cause the completely ideally opposed party to come out on top with a victory. See Ross Perot's run for president for evidence of this happening on an actual election scale.
Back to the point of obligation. It is not because they are most popular, but sadly due to the system itself that a vote other than the main two would be the actual opposite of what is desired. It creates a system of strategic voting with choosing 'the better of two evils' so that the person you agree the least with doesn't win.
Now I am not saying this is an unfixable problem or that each election is the same. This most definitely could be fixed with a better voting system. Of what I am not sure, but there are better ways to do things that I believe is worth exploring.
And I by no means am saying that the premise of any party splitting is not a possibility, it most definitely is, and as you said almost happened with the last election. (I am not that great at history but I am pretty sure it has happened in the US's past as well.) With that possibility, each election has to be taken as they come, you cannot really predict into the future and say that the only two parties are going to be the Democrats and Republicans, but I personally feel like if they keep the winner takes all method you can predict there will only be two parties, with maybe brief stints otherwise. But at that point who cares if the names changed. The two party system is so absurdly built so as no one can get exactly what they want and they have to vote for people they really do not agree with in order to help make sure someone they agree with even less does not get a seat of power.
@freemo I see your point, and I don't really disagree with it at all. I think it is definitely possible for the parties to change. I just think with the system we have in place there is a pressure towards the two party system, and I don't believe it's due to a flawed narrative on the part of the voters, but there is the notion of win-ability for every candidate. I'm sure every voter who votes wants their candidate to win. Do you think it is inaccurate or even wrong for a voter to try and imagine what others will vote all things being equal? If there is a weak enough presence of a third party then could it be safely assumed they don't have a chance? Maybe I am out of the loop in this one too, but honestly I have seen practically no campaign from either front runner in the US, let alone from a third party. I am sure Corona is the major cause of that, but would it be wrong for me to assume that a third party isn't winnable in this election?
And that's what I meant by you have to play each election in the context of only itself. Yes new parties have come up in US history, but it's still always devolved into a two-party system. Usually when the new party came up it usurped another raining party for a longer period of time. So I'm not against the party's changing, and their ideals with them, but I think you might have to take a look at the specific election and see if a vote to a third party would even mean anything in that election.
Is this flawed thinking too? I'm not saying you can't campaign for a third party, or even push for social change through other ways, you mentioned Congress which could be one great way for a third-party candidate to get in. You can assume less people will make the safer vote and really judge the draw for each candidate. Just from my vantage point, it seems to me a third party would need more supporters to ever become a president. That's not beyond the realm of reality, it's just not our current reality.
@MikeX So I've seen the poitns argued int he video before, and I think its flawed in some ways, but makes valid points in others.
First off let me say I dont, and never have, felt that first pass the vote systems were the best voting system, they are not. I've always supported ranked choice voting as well as other alternative systems in general.
That said , there are two parts int he video i want to address seperately.. first is the idea that because the winner in a FPTV system can have minority of votes it is unfair. That is always inevitable and other voting systems simply hide the fact. In the end if only 20% of votes would go for Lion in an election, even if you have a system whereby you eliminate candidates in succession such as ranked choice voting it may give the impression that the winner is a majority favorite, but it really hasnt changed the fact that the person who wins is still the top choice of 20% of the people. so that point is ultimately moot, it is an inevitable consequence of having multiple candidates where a population has diverse ideals as to who should win. We counter that in the USA by having many people up for vote (congress).
The second issue is that FPTV always leads to a two party system.. The fact is it will **only** lead to a two party system if the people who vote adopt the flawed logic that voting for an underdog is less valuable. It is not the FPTV system that is causing the two party system but rather the flawed narrative the voters are told, namely, that voting for a third party is a wasted vote to begin with.
We can actually disprove this assertion with America's own history. We have always had a FPTV system yet the dominate two parties in america have switched multiple times throughout our history, showing that it does not **always** lead to a two party system. In fact throughout the history of the USA there have been 8 different parties that have been the top 2 dominate parties in any one election.
So we know from history parties can and do change, and second parties win. Usually suddenly. So the very assertion that it is a two party system is ultimately an illusion, one that self perpetuates itself by believing in it, but not because of anything inherent in the system after all.