Voting third party in the United States is meaningless

[winb83]

After accepting Bernie's loss months ago I was looking to Jill Stein as a possible alternative candidate to vote for. In the end I have to accept that voting for her in our system is like voting for Donald Trump something I would never do so I can't give her my vote.

Duverger's Law: Why American Third Parties are Hopless Fantasies

According to Duverger’s Law, the number of major political parties in any given republican/democratic country is determined by the electoral structure of that country. States with proportional representation – those that award seats to political parties based on the total portion of the popular vote they receive – tend to develop a multi-party system. Single-district plurality voting systems in which seats are allocated district-by-district based on which candidate wins the most votes in that single district – such as the United States – produce a two-party system.

There are two primary reasons for this. The first is that weaker parties will tend to consolidate with one another to improve their chances of winning. The other is that voters themselves tend to gradually desert the weaker parties, instead opting to support (and also influence) their preference in one of the larger parties.

Because only the winner of each district will be granted a seat, parties that consistently come in third place or less will fail to be represented in the government, no matter how much of the vote they receive. This especially disadvantages parties that are spread thin across wide geographic areas. For example, though Ross Perot won 18.9% of the popular vote in 1992, he won no votes in the Electoral College because his supporters were not concentrated enough anywhere to win even a single state.

To sum it all up if your candidate of choice doesn't make it out of the primaries then it's always going to come down to the lesser of two evils. No matter what you do you're going to be helping out one or the other. Anything else outside of a vote for the remaining candidate from the two major parties that you're ideologically closest to is simply helping out the candidate that's ideologically farthest away from you between those two parties.

The system by design converges on two parties and it's been proven by Duverger’s Law. No matter what you do you're playing into that system. Your third party vote helps the candidate furthest from your beliefs and does little to nothing to help the third party candidate you voted for who doesn't stand a chance anyway.

 

[winb83]

Also if a third party did rise our current system couldn't support it anyway. All it would lead to is the House picking the president and the Senate picking the vice president because nobody reaches the required number of electoral votes to win. Again two party system with a third party frozen out. Really it would guarantee Republican presidents because every state would get one vote and population dense states would lose any influence on the process.

 

[the cac mamba]

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

After accepting Bernie's loss months ago I was looking to Jill Stein as a possible alternative candidate to vote for. In the end I have to accept that voting for her in our system is like voting for Donald Trump something I would never do so I can't give her my vote.

Duverger's Law: Why American Third Parties are Hopless Fantasies


To sum it all up if your candidate of choice doesn't make it out of the primaries then it's always going to come down to the lesser of two evils. No matter what you do you're going to be helping out one or the other. Anything else outside of a vote for the remaining candidate from the two major parties that you're ideologically closest to is simply helping out the candidate that's ideologically farthest away from you between those two parties.

The system by design converges on two parties and it's been proven by Duverger’s Law. No matter what you do you're playing into that system. Your third party vote helps the candidate furthest from your beliefs and does little to nothing to help the third party candidate you voted for who doesn't stand a chance anyway.

Just watch this:

 

[SirReginald]

I may just vote for Gary Johnson if he makes it on the national debate stage.

 

[JahFocus CS]

So what you're basically saying is that the system basically precludes the possibility of fundamentally changing the system from within

 

[CHL]

So what you're basically saying is that the system basically precludes the possibility of fundamentally changing the system from within

 

[Dr. Acula]

The issues with the third parties in this country is that they are mainly focused on presidential races every four years and as a result they never will be viable when it comes to the 4 year presidential elections because they have no additional political clout to back them up.

What they need to do is focus on securing local elections, senate, and the house. We need to see more green party/Libertarian county commissioners, judges, school board members, and senators. Even more dog catchers.

Building a viable political party is like building a business. Even the Tea Party faction of the republican party has the sense to focus their efforts on a local level to get their foot in the door. This is what third parties need to do. However, I think they are too attracted to the attention that is given during the presidential cycle and focus on that.

 

[winb83]

So what you're basically saying is that the system basically precludes the possibility of fundamentally changing the system from within

Think of the tea party. It existed inside the republican party instead of becoming its own real party. This is because if they can sway the republican voters to their side then they can get people elected in the two party system. If the tea party exits the republican party and becomes an official third party they would never get enough of the vote to have any meaningful power.

I may just vote for Gary Johnson if he makes it on the national debate stage.

The problem isn't him getting on the debate stage. The problem is he can't win. He'd need 270 to win and no third party candidate is gonna get that much. In fact if he can manage to peel off a few states he could end up either helping Hillary or blocking both from hitting 270 which means the incoming House picks the president and the Senate picks the vice president. Both houses are republican so you tell me who wins.

I know you're probably frustrated but there's really noting you can do in this system that doesn't play into it. If you don't vote the candidate that's closest to your ideology looses that potential vote and it strengthens the candidate furthest from you. Anything other than voting for the candidate from the to major parties that's closest to you will help the candidate furthest from you.

So what you're basically saying is that the system basically precludes the possibility of fundamentally changing the system from within

It would take constitutional amendments and a total change of our election system to change things. too many people are satisfied with the way things are now for that to happen. if we started having run off elections we could have many more parties.

 

[winb83]

The issues with the third parties in this country is that they are mainly focused on presidential races every four years and as a result they never will be viable when it comes to the 4 year presidential elections because they have no additional political clout to back them up.

What they need to do is focus on securing local elections, senate, and the house. We need to see more green party/Libertarian county commissioners, judges, school board members, and senators. Even more dog catchers.

Building a viable political party is like building a business. Even the Tea Party faction of the republican party has the sense to focus their efforts on a local level to get their foot in the door. This is what third parties need to do. However, I think they are too attracted to the attention that is given during the presidential cycle and focus on that.

when it comes to local elections money and the establishment rule them. those elections are typically bought by the two candidates from the two major parties and how much money they raise. you aren't going to get a third political party organized enough with enough support to overturn that unless one of the major two parties crashes and that party replaces them.

 

[Dr. Acula]

when it comes to local elections money and the establishment rule them. those elections are typically bought by the two candidates from the two major parties and how much money they raise. you aren't going to get a third political party organized enough with enough support to overturn that unless one of the major two parties crashes and that party replaces them.

Then you take a business approach and start to gather capital from investors. To be honest this is soemthing that would take a very long time to come to fruition. You need long time outside investment to start to compete. A lot of Silicon Valley types tend to be lovers of alternative third party style of politics. That may be a good demographic to target.

 

[ZEB WALTON]

Yup

 

[Deutsche Bank]

You're either voting for communism or crony capitalism, it's not rocket fukking science. Socialism leads to communism, capitalism leads to crony capitalism.

 

[acri1]

Yep.

The only real solution is instant-runoff voting, though that probably won't be politically feasible anytime soon.


Instant-runoff voting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

So what you're basically saying is that the system basically precludes the possibility of fundamentally changing the system from within

No, the problem is the way we vote. Thats it.

Our congress SHOULD be more politically diverse, but its impossible because of how votes are tallied since theres no parliament or mixed member voting.

We COULD change how voting works with this: