this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
990 points (97.1% liked)
Political Memes
5608 readers
1230 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm very curious to know how exactly you want to word this law to acheive the effect you're dreaming of without it being unenforceable, without it being weaponizeable as a mass voter suppression tool, and without creating a freedom of speech or freedom of assembly violation.
A fair voting system allows people to vote for whatever reason they want. Voters want to win. Banding together to focus and force multiply campaign resources increases chances to win. Political parties are an inevitability in a fair system.
I understand the vibe of your sentiment is to not allow political parties to grow to the overcentralizing control they have today. You're not particularly concerned about, say, a band of guys who meet up at the pub to figure out who they're gonna organize a collective vote for. At least I hope not, because the alternative sounds wildly dystopian. But like, what's the line in the sand between the two? How do you define the difference, legally?
The goal is to make it so self-declared private organizations can't be an official part of the election process. At the moment, the state holds primaries for political parties, and helps them keep track of who's in which one which helps maintain the duopoly.
I'm sympathetic to the concept, but I think that the advantages that organized parties have in terms of coordination (e.g. people with broadly similar values and policy goals choosing one candidate to represent those goals to avoid splitting the vote and seeing someone antithetical to those shared goals elected) are sufficiently strong that you would just see the current primaries replaced immediately by a primary process run completely independent of government oversight and resources. I can't imagine that being good from a perspective of electoral legitimacy or reducing the influence of money in politics.
Assume for a second we're using a cardinal voting system, and not using something outdated and barbaric like first past the post.