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(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
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Sometimes I think breaking the two party system is the single most necessary thing for the USA. All this back and forth and debate about voting vs not voting and lesser evilism is ridiculous.
How the fuck did it ever get to a situation where you have two parties who both oppose electoral reform but you're afraid to not vote for one of them in case the worse one wins?
This is democracy theater.
The vote allocation system was very purposefully mathematically designed for exactly this outcome.
More than once I've read in The Guardian some columnist or other justifying Britains voting system (also First Past The Post, like the US), which for example will give absolute parliamentary majorities on a mere 34% of the vote, as being a good thing because it brings "stability".
You know what's "stable" - swamps.
Yeah, Americans set up their voting system (that was supposed to be updated iirc!) and then just acted like a standard business and categorized the effort to do so as uneconomical.
Yep, but this must be accomplished mainly outside of current elections - making sure that candidates that align with this view are even available hangs on a lot more than a single date to vote. Telling people to just not care because it all sucks is the last stage in a long process where viable candidates did not get enough support the rest of the time.
Yeah it's depressing how few seem to get that the billions being dumped into politics aren't to make one party or the other win, it's to make it so that there will always be only two parties, both of whom are friendly to billionaires.
Let's all just forget how many of these ghouls make sizeable contributions to both parties.
Hello two day old both sides account!
Are you saying democrats dont get donations from billionaires and the PACs they control?
Well met, the-answer-is-thought-terminating-cliche-what-was-the-question.
I hope you're having a lovely day.
Thankfully your lot doesn't seem too successful thus far.
No answer to them being paid off by the same people because there cannot be one.
Provide specific examples of your largely bullshit claim and they'll debunk themselves.
No it's not. The American greens get tons of money from right wing billionaires, because they want to exploit the spoiler effect. They don't need to spend money maintaining the two party system, the spoiler effect does it for them.
America needs voting reform, a switch to instant runoff.
Astonishing to see how motivated people seem to be to push this conspiracy theory FUD, when the Greens are the only party to refuse corporate donors as a matter of principle.
Lol. Enter magician Jill Stein stage right. She magically appears right before an election, siphons votes, then magically disappears again after the election.
And in 2024 she managed to accumulate a massive 0.5% of the total votes cast. A true contender for the 15 seconds she was around.
Why can't the "smartest people in the room" change the voting system to remove or lessen the spoiler effect? You say it happens every election, so why dont democrats get ahead of the "problem" by making these crucial electoral reforms?
Only one party has members that are not friendly to billionaires.
Members maybe. Actual Representatives? One, who they keep around to be their social media star to play to the crowd, while the actual party policy is written and enacted by the usual group of old white neoliberals.
Three. And it's gonna be four in a few days if enough Michiganers vote. This is what happens when people have hope.
One party has a (growing) presence of members who openly speak out against the wealthy and in favor of things like electoral reform and Supreme Court reform and social program expansion.
The other party has zero members who do so.
Simple fact.
It's called the spoiler effect and it's an issue of the voting system of "First Past the Post".
Imagine you have 4 parties, A,B, C and D. Let's say A, B, and C largely align on issues and D is the outlier. While 70% of the population wants either A,B, or C, if the vote gets split evenly then we see D wins despite on wining 30% of votes.
C says "Not cool man. I'm giving up and telling all my voters to vote for B". Now you have a three party system.
D isn't dumb and so he throws propaganda and budget to draw voters to A despite not agreeing with their policies at all. They are incentivized to split the vote because of how the system is designed. Voters get split between A and B again making 33% the victory threshold. D ekes out another win despite not reaching a majority. A and B decide to join forces to never let D win again and boom two party system.
Numbers are hyperbolic for demonstration but this is how it works. It's why sometimes third party campaigns get backed by the political parties least in alignment with them.
You will never solve the two party system without changing voting to one that negates the spoiler effect.
And you will never change voting to one that negates the spoiler effect while the two party system is in effect, because the two parties with power both benefit from it being the way it is.
Some people think that those in power will put the option to remove their power on a ballot. That's always been confusing, and hilarious to me.
"Never" is a long time. If this were just a game theory world, then yes. If people always did the optimal move, then a multi-party system would eventually become a two-party system, and once it became a two party system, there would be no way to change it because every change is non-optimal.
People sometimes don't behave rationally. In Canada in the 1990s the Progressive Conservative party had a majority government and seemed unstoppable. But, the leader Brian Mulroney became incredibly unpopular. At the end of his time in office, he was so unpopular that everybody knew that his party was going to be destroyed in the next election. But, at that point Canada was effectively a 2-party country, Liberals and Progressive Conservatives. Even though the Liberals were going to take power, it was just a matter of time before it swung back to the Progressive Conservatives. So, the smart move for the PC party would have been to just bide their time.
Instead, the party split in two. Half stayed PC, the other half joined a new party called Reform. But, because of first-past-the-post voting, the conservative votes were split, half went to the Reform party candidate, half went to the PC candidate. As a result, the PC party was destroyed in the election. They went from 169 seats to Liberals' 83 to only having 2 seats. They were the 5th biggest party, after the Bloc Quebecois, Reform, and NDP. They nearly lost official party status.
These days there is no PC party anymore, The split party eventually reformed and dropped the "Progressive", now they're just the Conservative party. And, they're again part of the duopoly. Whenever the Liberals lose, the Conservatives win, and vice versa. But, for a while things changed because humans are not always rational.
It's theoretically possible for humans to be irrational in a good way too. A well meaning and honest party could gain power and then pass legislation that hurt itself and helped democracy, like getting rid of first past the post. But, to do that, they'd need to feel massive pressure from voters. Even if the politicians want to do it, they need to show that the people are forcing their hand.
Remember when the Canadian liberal party was elected after promising to change the voting system and then they just... didnt?
Yep, it was strange they even pretended they were going to do it.
The intelligent thing to do is to vote for the major party that is objectively better than the other major party, while volunteering to help any 3rd parties you have interest in so they slowly become more viable. If everyone did this, we'd be in better shape in the short run by electing the non-FelonRapistPedoTraitor party while making things better in the long run by elevating at least one 3rd party.
Cuz right now no 3rd party is even really trying to be viable. So it just isn't an option. People have to help them for that to happen.
Only one of those parties runs candidates that have election reform on their platform. The parties aren't the same.
And when they were in power, they didn't do any of that reform. Weird, right?!?
How we vote is handled at the state level. Can you explain why most blue states still use First-past-the-post voting? Republicans arent in the way in these state governments.