Ah, I saw this term in the past. Never understood, I could barely see the relationship to US elections. And, I’m a complete alien to the sophisticated methods billionaires use to sustain their US dictatorship, but it seems to me that this only works because of some “given” stuff like having only 2 parties, and having electorates… Disclaimer: I don’t want to bother that much into understanding this, like going through lengthy articles on the web. But will definitively read your answers (thanks!)
A lot of stuff in the U.S. is like an early draft of democracy that never got changed.
Whoever gets the most votes wins (aka “first past the post”), but if there are more than two people running, it’s very common for the winner to have less than a majority of the public supporting them. It’s why we don’t see much in the way of third parties.
Instead we have primaries, which are just elections for members of a specific political party, but which have much lower participation than the general election. These are also “first past the post” elections, so as a result we end up with a lot of candidates that people aren’t happy with, but you have to vote for the lesser evil.
The house of representatives is vulnerable to gerrymandering, especially because each state draws it’s own districts by it’s own rules.
The Senate is unfair as written in the constitution - each state gets two senators, regardless of population. So a state like Wyoming or Montana gets two senators while they have a lower population than individual cities like New York or Los Angeles. It’s one big reason why we can’t get any popular laws passed.
Ideally I’d love to see the president elected by ranked choice voting, the Senate eliminated, and the house of representatives elected by single transferrable vote. But we’re so far from that it’s science fiction.
This kind of voting forces the existence of two party systems.
Suppose you have two parties one left wing that gets 60% of the vote and one right wing that gets 40% in every district. Right now the left wing always wins.
If the left wing party splits into two blocks of 30% each, the right wing always wins.
So if you want to win, you can never split from the large parties, even if you feel unrepresented.
Ah, I saw this term in the past. Never understood, I could barely see the relationship to US elections. And, I’m a complete alien to the sophisticated methods billionaires use to sustain their US dictatorship, but it seems to me that this only works because of some “given” stuff like having only 2 parties, and having electorates… Disclaimer: I don’t want to bother that much into understanding this, like going through lengthy articles on the web. But will definitively read your answers (thanks!)
A lot of stuff in the U.S. is like an early draft of democracy that never got changed.
Whoever gets the most votes wins (aka “first past the post”), but if there are more than two people running, it’s very common for the winner to have less than a majority of the public supporting them. It’s why we don’t see much in the way of third parties.
Instead we have primaries, which are just elections for members of a specific political party, but which have much lower participation than the general election. These are also “first past the post” elections, so as a result we end up with a lot of candidates that people aren’t happy with, but you have to vote for the lesser evil.
The house of representatives is vulnerable to gerrymandering, especially because each state draws it’s own districts by it’s own rules.
The Senate is unfair as written in the constitution - each state gets two senators, regardless of population. So a state like Wyoming or Montana gets two senators while they have a lower population than individual cities like New York or Los Angeles. It’s one big reason why we can’t get any popular laws passed.
Ideally I’d love to see the president elected by ranked choice voting, the Senate eliminated, and the house of representatives elected by single transferrable vote. But we’re so far from that it’s science fiction.
You’ve got it backwards.
This kind of voting forces the existence of two party systems.
Suppose you have two parties one left wing that gets 60% of the vote and one right wing that gets 40% in every district. Right now the left wing always wins.
If the left wing party splits into two blocks of 30% each, the right wing always wins.
So if you want to win, you can never split from the large parties, even if you feel unrepresented.
If you"re unrepresented, how is it winning?