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Just a little reminder of why the two party system is a fallacy and why you should vote third party tomorrow:
1) the chance of Biden-Trump being determined by a single vote is virtually impossible. There is a greater chance that a third party will win the election than there is of Biden and Trump being decided by one vote.
2) Because your vote wont actually determine the outcome of the election what you need to ask yourself is what vote will send the message you want for the future. You cant effect who will win but by bolstering the numbers of the party you think is ideologically the best you send the message for future elections that the party you support stands a chance. You are and always have been voting for future elections, not this one.. so the real vote is, do you wantt o perpetuate a two party system or do you want to see the two party system broken?
3) the primary parties will be on the ballot regardless. Third parties need to have a certain level of support to make the ballots at all. By voting third party you ensure that third parties show on the ballot in future elections and help drive change whereby we can push out the priamry parties from having a monopoly...
In short, there is no argument to support a two party system exists, there is no logical reason that your vote is more effective or does more good voting for a party based on its liklihood of winning. However not voting third party does do real measurable harm, even with just one vote.
If you care about america do the right thing, vote third party!
#uspol #election #election2020 #biden2020 #Trump2020 #Jo2020
@freemo
I totally agree. In fact, these are the reasons I voted third party in 2016, even knowing they had little to no chance of winning.
However, I want to note two things:
1. Even if I don't support a two party system, this does not prevent me from believing that the candidate of one of the two big parties is still the best choice and voting for them.
This year, I sincerely believe there is a good choice among the two who is better than even the third party choices. And so I voted for him.
2. (and this is where things get tricky) A two (or three) party system is nearly inevitable.
The reason a two party system comes about is because of the power in numbers. People are willing to compromise on a few of their principles in order to reduce the risk of an opponent winning.
With that understanding, even if 10 parties were all to start out on a level playing field of recognizability and promotion, inevitably, some of them would be close enough to each other in policy that they would realize they are more powerful together. Once this realization occurs, the field quickly reduces itself to 3 or 2 parties that generally cover most people's policy preferences, even if they're not perfect.
In such a case, smaller parties stand very little chance of winning anything against these consolidated bases.
And so everyone is left with a choice. They can either A) vote for the candidate that they truly believe is the best candidate even though that candidate has a really small base, or B) vote for the candidate who may not be the best, but has a much better chance of winning against a worse candidate because of the size of their base.
For most people, B is the optimal choice to make, especially when one believes the opponent candidate is a destructive evil force for some reason.
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So in short, I agree, however, I don't blame anyone who sees the two party system and votes within it because they want to mitigate the risks of someone winning who they believe is evil.
If you legitimately feel that one of the primary party candidates are the best, though its hard for me to see how, then yes, by all means, support them!
I would disagree with the inevitability of a two party system as evidenced by government systems. There are many governments, some of which much older than us, some of which are historic others are still around, which have had voting systems very similar to the USA. There are many examples of such systems not degrading into a two party system. So the argument that it is unavoidable and inevitable with a system like america's would seem incorrect if for no other reason than based on historic evidence.
@freemo
Oh! I am unaware of of any country with similar election processes that hasn't been to some degree reduced to a 2 or 3 party system. Or at least a system were 2 or 3 parties run most of the show.
And I guess it is possible for more than 2 or 3 parties to be stable so long as each of those parties is able to maintain a base of significant enough size to compete on some scale with the other parties. It would also require that each of the parties have policies unique to that party that the base is unwilling to compromise on.
So I do think it would be possible, especially in countries that may have strong religious diversity. But again, I haven't heard of anything like that.
Could you tell me about some?
@freemo
Interesting! I'll definitely look into that! Thanks for the info!
@aminewatcher The most notable and exagerated example I can think of would be the Weimar Republic. their voting system was much like ours, not a coalition system but where the majority winner took the presidency, winner take all, the same being applied to each seat in their version of the senate.. so their system of voting was very similar to us. Despite the similarity they had a great many representatives and parties in each election. Full list of canddiateson the ballot and counted I think were upwards of 100 different parties in some years.
Though the definition of a two party system isnt so much who gets on the ballot but who wins. In the USA virtually all seats in our senate are one f two parties with a very small number being third party, so we call taht a two party system.
By contrast the weimar republic had a pretty healthy division of parties and seats. We see about 10 different parties holding seats at the same time.