this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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At scale the US system has too many layers of abstraction. We are not a direct democracy once you pass the small scale elections you mentioned. Those abstractions combined with first around the goalpost winning makes it so statistically the chance of third party success rounds to 0. So if you vote 3rd party in a major election when you otherwise would have voted Biden then you helped Trump because that 3rd party vote's only impact on the election was to reduce Biden's total by 1.
The only chance 3rd party has of gaining ground is if we switched to ranked choice voting as this would allow people to realistically gauge and react to support for 3rd parties without aiding the major party they dislike in the meantime.
Also need to ditch the Electoral College as it is the worst of our voting abstractions that is only amplified by gerrymandering.
The way you put it, I would hardly even call it a democracy. Or let me rephrase that. It's a democracy but a really broken one.
So the system would have to be fixed. And of course that won't happen because it would damage the parties that would need to fix it. Yea... really complicated.
But at least locally, it should be fine to vote for 3rd parties. I see many seats there. You should try to get the choice in the places you can. (as long as the small parties aren't even worse, of course)
Sounds like you've got it perfectly then!
You get it. And in smaller and more local elections, more third party/independent candidates do actually win.
the Brookings institute and The Economist would agree with you.