NPR:
Amid growing frustration with both major political parties, voters are open to some big changes.
A new poll, commissioned by supporters of election reforms and shared with NPR, shows there is significant support for upending winner-take-all U.S. House… Continue reading
The post “Voters are sick of the 2-party system. A new poll shows they’re open to big changes” appeared first on Election Law Blog.
The 2 party system only works for business and power. We need a system that works for the people.
Of course the voters are open to change… however we need a non First past the post system to even dip our toes in change, and in order to get that in place we need a majority from… that’s the real hinderance with fixing politics in general is the people who currently are in charge are the ones who have to change it. It’s like if in a sport we needed to pass a ban of a steroid that’s been rampant in a sport for 50 years… and all rule changes must go through the currently seated champions of the sport.
Our de facto two party system isn’t statutory. It’s not written in the constitution that there can only be two parties. It’s just the natural consequence of a winner-take-all, first-past-the-post election system. All a candidate has to do is win 51% of the votes to get 100% of the political power. It makes third party candidates essentially nonviable. That’s what would need to change if we want to ditch the two party system.
Plug for https://fairvote.org/ . We have a long way before ranked choice voting gets to federal elections, but many local elections are using it now and once people are familiar with it we can hopefully push for more far -reaching adoption.
I wish that was true in WA state. Incumbents and the typical 2-party won in landslides. Anyone independent or voicing out against the nonsense that politics has turned into was mostly put in the single digit percent range.
Although our voter turnout was near 18-22% across all districts, so hard to know what people are thinking when they don’t fucking vote.
I don’t really understand how you came to this conclusion. Seattle is going to ranked choice voting in August 2027. As I understand it, Pierce, Thurston, San Juan and Benton counties plus Bellingham are also moving to RCV.
Does Washington not have a two-party system? Most states and the federal election are not explicitly two-party but are designed in such a way that there can never be a viable third party. It’s a system problem, not a candidate problem. That’s what the post is about.
But the people winning the elections by being second worst say that any changes to the voting system are too complicated for the electorate to understand.
It’s a system where the two highest in the primary to the general, regardless of party. Sounds good on paper but it’s still possible for the vote on one side to be split, similar to the spoiler effect, resulting in two of the weaker party winning when there are nearly dozens of candidates of the stronger parties sharing the votes.
And yeah, we need better elections (and not Ranked Choice either. Score or Approval are simple to explain and don’t have those effects where you can help someone you don’t want to win by voting for those you do)
This is probably the second worse time to have a movement like this.
The only time I could think that it would be worse is splitting the left wing vote before the 2028 elections.
I’m all for the MAGA renegade party!
Either that, or massive voter disillusionment on the right that causes them to sit out from the election in protest.
Let them MFs split up. I’m for walking in lock-step with the Blue vote, and dragging the centrists leftward. Once things can be truly changed, then we can split along ideological lines.
The MAGA renegade party is a pipe dream they’ll all fall in line and vote red come primary and general.
The only thing this type of thing does is split the left wing.
This^
Never Trumpers today are just called “MAGA”
At this point, I’m hoping the left has wisened up and won’t fall for it anymore. History needs to stop repeating itself. Leftists get defeated because they can’t put aside their internal squabbles and form a united front.
I’m going to assume you think liberals are leftists?
No, but sometimes we have to form tenuous alliances to save our asses.
The DSA is never gaining traction in a fascist state where voting is actively manipulated and resistance is persecuted. Remember Franco crushed communist/leftist resistance and dominated Spain for 40 years. The republicans lost because of their internal squabbling. They couldn’t put their differences aside to further a show of strength.
We’re too little in number to make an impact right now. We need to keep getting DSA endorsed candidates in from the ground level. We need to primary candidates in such a way as to pull the party to the left. People need to see that socialist governance is rational. Mamdani is already paving the way.
What we cannot afford is a split. We should be building a united front of anyone left of center, not tearing it down. Getting into purity tests right now when we’re stuck in a burning house isn’t a winning strategy.
Well I’m here to tell you democrats are right of center at best. There is no party in the US, even the DSA, that would be considered left. Leftism begins at anti capitalism and they all support the status quo. Maybe instead of trying to pull leftists to the center, dems grow a spine and finally work with leftists.
Either we’re too big a voting bloc to ignore that we lose elections for dems because we don’t vote for them, or we’re such a small minority that dems don’t need us to win elections. But too many people, especially dems, like to blame us for when they lose but then refuse to cooperate and blame us that they didn’t win.
This whole “let’s not divide the left vote” is simply another uneducated talking point that does nothing but keep the pendulum swinging.
They’re not going to learn.
After 2024 I don’t think they ever will.
It’s incredibly effective. If I were a campaign planner for the conservatives, getting the left to complain about their own candidates would be the low hanging fruit.
Great. When exactly is a good time to fix this broken system?
This article isn’t about having more parties within the same electoral system (which indeed does not make sense), but changing the electoral system to make more parties viable.
The same was said in 2024. And 2020. And 2016. And every election before that.
No offense but if you can’t see why it’s a big problem now you’re part of it.
I’ll wait and see which way the Democrats decide to go. If it’s another “come together, let’s bring back bipartisanship” deal, then it’s a waste to cast a blue ballot.
Yea and if that doesn’t happen leftists will find another reason not to vote.
Sounds like they’re a critical voting bloc, you should inform the Democrats how to win.
Democrats should move further right and cater to people who actually vote and give up on leftists.
Worked for Clinton
It’s a snowball’s chance in hell of actually happening, but this would be the best time for this to happen if it lead to proper new policy that changes how voted are counted.
Now I see what you mean about the idea of a big Left state splitting its electoral votes. Which would be bad in 2028. But the snowball’s chance is most/all states shifting to a non FPTP voting system and making a 3rd party viable.
I’m not a big fan of proportional representation, because it can be gamed just like the current system, but in proportional representation you don’t actually cast a ballot for a person. While a third party candidate might sneak in there with some proportion of the vote, for the most part it will still be D’s and R’s with most of the vote, so whoever is the first D or R on the list will basically have the job for life, with no practical way to challenge them at all.
I do like ranked choice voting, in conjunction with a massive increase in the size of Congress. 435 is way too small. 1435 might be the right number, if my math is right that could be about 250k people per Rep. Let’s see people try to gerrymander 175 Congressional Districts in California…
You can have proportional voting where votes go to specific people. Basically just do away with House districts and then have X slots. Top X vote getters get elected. You can also have a form of ranked choice where excess votes (beyond what’s needed to secure a position) get proportionally spread among the other candidates according to their second choices.
But that is functionally identical to what we have now: in a district with 5 slots, D’s run 5 candidates, R’s run 5 candidates, most people pick D or R down the line. A district can still be drawn to favor one over the other, except instead of 1 safe seat, you have 5 safe seats.
The only change would be that an impactful third party can only change one of those five safe seats. By moving to this sort of proportional representation, you actually dilute third parties’ power further.
Proportional voting doesn’t give X votes to each voter. You can just look up how these different options work instead of imagining that they’re dumb and you were the one to figure out an obvious flaw.
I have read up on it, and people who advocate for it take as a given that it would make things better, but I just dont see it. I go by three axioms:
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as long as drawing districts is a political process, districts will be drawn to the partisan advantage of the major party in charge
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Once you have multi-member districts, major parties will run a candidate for as many slots as they are allowed to. And party-line voters will expect to have a way to express a party-line preference. I expect that any system which does not allow a party to run a candidate for every slot will be challenged.
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Once you disassociate votes with individual candidates, major party bosses can dole out “safe” seats as patronage. But if you don’t disassociate votes with individual candidates, a party can still sweep a multi-member district with 50.1% percent of the vote for each spot
The only case where proportional voting helps is where the multi-member district becomes so large that it is the only district, and now it can’t be gerrymandered at all. But you still have other problems then.
I would sooner keep districts the way they are, but make many more of them, and introduce either RCV or a true runoff when no candidate gets 50%.
I really don’t think you have since you don’t know basic things about what proportional representation means.
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Ranked Choice Voting. If anyone is curious just know that it’s illegal in some places in USA. Similar with general work striking.
It’s my personal opinion that a lot of the support for Ranked Choice specifically is astroturfing from groups that don’t want real change. It’s nearly as bad as First Past the Post and is still subject to spoiler effects for example. Also too confusing for voters to trust.
My preferences are for approval or score voting. With those there isn’t a situation where voting for someone you want increases odds for someone you don’t.
It’s not astroturfig. That’s the way a lot of local elections (and 1-2 statewide elections) work. It’s a system that has precedent, so it gets the most support.
But yes, there’s more than one way to shear a sheep. I’m open to any variety of choices not based on winner-take-all.
there isn’t a situation where voting for someone you want increases odds for someone you don’t.
RCV barely increases the odds for someone you don’t want. The whole idea is that it rewards moderate views so that “everyone’s 2nd choice” is better than a radical first choice. The Spoiler effect will almost always be there, but Nothing is worse than FPTP for that effect. Especially with Score based voting that can (and given experience with internet ratings, will) degenerate to “0 or max score”. Score based voting works best with high information electorate, and the US… hell, pretty much all global politics aren’t full of people laser focused on every little law.
I like Approval based voting, though. The issue lies more in excessive runoffs when we get the most popular candidates (or the worst case where none of the candidate are approved enough).
Not happening as long as we have a pay-for-play system. Both Dems and republicans profit from having a corporate- and AIPAC- financed winner-take-all voting system.
Let’s prioritize on dealing with the elephant in the room, instead of making Christmas wish lists to Santa.
They’re open to big changes because corporations have captured our political parties and neither party answers to the population, you know, like a functional democracy. Citizens United and deregulation of corporations is where things went wrong.
One of the biggest issues I see on the ground is that voters aren’t stepping up. This is even at the local level. This is a problem all across the USA. Good people aren’t willing to run for a lot of these local offices. Nobody’s preparing the next generation / replacements to take over once older candidates age out or move up the chain. Then even if you get multiple people to run for a local office, these voters who are supposedly tired of the 2 party system don’t volunteer, donate, or even bother to show up to events where the candidates are making themselves available for dialog. They aren’t interacting with candidates’ social media. So realistically, if voters don’t change, nothing’s going to change about the 2-party system.
Challenge mutual exclusion in political parties. In the US we vote for the person, not the party. Why can’t I belong to more than one political party?
The problem I see is meaningful change to the voting system requires a constitutional amendment which is a high bar. Political parties are not in the constitution. Getting rid of mutual exclusion just requires a good legal argument…
Most people in the United States don’t vote for the person over the party they vote for the party. If the Republican and they have an r by their name that’s the person that’s going to get their vote no matter who etc.
Never gonna happen. The duopoly is never gonna allow it.
Party principles have a history of changing over time.
I think we can still salvage “democrats”. We just have to make it far left.
If we do make a new party though, what animal or color ?
I mean white seems like the only option. But that’s kinda maybe problematic.
Can’t be part of the white party.
Rainbow?
Oh and animal. Hm.
Anything is better than a literal jack ass.Even if we stick with the Dems vs Republicans. Can Dems get a new mascot. ?
Can’t be part of the white party.
WHITE POWER!!!..wait
If we’re reconfiguring the system enough to have a third party, we can transfer white to the Republicans to align with their primary organizing principle.
Ranked choice pls
alaska has it and lets just say the independant candidates can be weird
GOOD.
You suggest that the main party candidates can’t be?
Approval voting, please.
Anything clone-independent will make further reforms much easier.
True. Ranked choice is progress. My problem with it is that still makes polarizing politics an advantage.
Example: 3 candidates run, A is leftwing, B is more center (leftwing or right leaning), C is right wing. A and C both get 40% of rank 1 votes because they benefit from the polarized atmosphere, B only gets 20% of rank 1, so they are eliminated and their voters are run off to either A, C or dropped if they didn’t pick a second candidate.
Say after runoff A has 44%, and C has 45%. Or vice versa, it doesn’t matter. The winner doesn’t even have support of the majority of voters and polarized politics continues to be an advantage. But if you look at those who voted for A or C as their first choice, of the 40% for A 25% had B as their second, and of the 40% for C 18% had B as their second. So 43% of the voters gave a ranked 2 vote for B and 20% gave a ranked 1.
Approval voting is similar to ranked choice where you vote for every candidate you would be happy with. But you don’t rank them and there is not elimination and runoff. You just give 1 vote to every candidate you would approve of and the highest wins. So let’s look at the results with approval voting.
A has 44% approval. C has 45% approval. And B has 63% approval. B is the clear winner, despite being the first eliminated in Ranked Choice.
If the goal is to have a representational government that is approved of by the governed, where oppositional polarizing politics and manipulation holds less sway, then Approval voting is the goal to shoot for.
Few people want B over their extreme I think. They want their lesser desired B vote to run off to A. Approval disproportionately advantages the middle, least desired by all parties.
Well first, the middle is where it should be pushed if representational goverment is the goal. They should represent the most people. Not the most popular minority group on election day. Not your politics over everyone else’s no matter what. But also, it can work in favor of the the more extreme candidate too when the electorate feels like the more central, safer option has the better chance and vote accordingly.
Example, the Socialist candidate is charismatic, popular, and has good ideas, but the term socialism leaves people uneasy or unsure if they can get enough support. So under Ranked Choice, many hedge their bets and vote Democrat as their first rank and the socialist as their second. 12% for as first rank for the socialist, 55% for the democrat, and 33% for the republican. After runoff, the socialist is elminated and dems win. But with approval, 45% of the 55% of dems actually approve of the socialist. Now the socialist has 57% support. The results then entirely hinge on on how many socialist first voters also support dems.
In such a case, shouldn’t they have voted 1 social 2 dem? Approval voting is fine, it allows cross aisle winners which are impossible now, but definitely has the chance of being a weak middle that’s always walking on eggshells.
I personally wish we used issue voting: each candidate takes a test, then you take a test, and an algorithm matches your answers with the candidate to avoid a huge number of problems with media driven campaigns.
That’s why I established residency in a State with Rank Choice
There are only two states with ranked choice voting, I think: Maine and Alaska. A number of smaller municipalities also have it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States
Drutman found that 6 in 10 Trump voters who have an opinion on proportional representation said they back it, too….
Okay, but like, what tiny percentage of those people could understand the concept, much less have an opinion about it? heh
