Vomiting

[Psyre]

I hate vomiting, how about you? Maybe the occasional purge?

[skullservant]

I wasn't excited to vote today. At all.

[D.o.S.]

I already voted.

And there were four presidential parties on the ballot.

[skullservant]

Santa was on our ballot

[hclapp219]

We had four presidential candidates on the ballot here in DC. I agree that there need to be more options, but I'm not sure how that will happen. There will have to be some scandal that takes down one of the parties, because they certainly will not allow another party to rise up. Or Ron Paul will have to secede from the Republican party and lead a real Libertarian party.

But one thing where your voice is really important is local elections. An incredible amount of policy and spending decisions are made at the state and local level.

[greyscales]

Welp, I might as well give the unnecessary reason for the way it is.

The 2 party system is unavoidable with the way our elections are held. In a majority rules election, you are going to find that a third party is going to detract from one side's. In other words, a party further away from the majority is going to win. Meaning minority rules. Let's be honest, that won't go over well. You'll get stagnation, gridlock, and plain anger from minority getting a say over the majority.

What you see happening in this case is that parties closest to each other will form a coalition to have a majority (this is what is happening in the UK). Naturally this creates, in practice, a two party government all over again. At least until one of the coalition parties is big enough to take on the others, which probably won't happen since multiple parties mean people are less likely to flip flop when they find one that suits their issues better.

Over time it may change, but it could actually hurt you as a voter to give your vote to a third party. You would be helping the party further away from you win. Granted, the Libertarian party is not necessarily going to work the same. Those people rather have to decide what issues matter to them more. But the Green party, for example, would take away votes from the Democratic party since they are generally more liberal than the Democrats. So it's choosing the lesser of two evils: "waste" your vote and help the party furthest from your views or vote for the party that isn't perfect but isn't as bad.

America isn't perfect, but there never will be a perfect government.

[Chankgeez]

With you on this one.

In A People's History Of The United States Howard Zinn calls it "The Bipartisan Consensus".

Our current political system is like a pendulum which swings back and forth in a very narrow range.

I voted. I didn't want to vote. I've come to hate politics.

My high school Western Civ. teacher used to like to say that theoretically the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship.

[snipelfritz]

Support your argument. "I am 100% against a two party system." is a very weak statement by itself. I'm not sure how we're supposed to discuss it, but I'll try.

Were we to develop into a third party system it's going to come from one major party breaking up into two parties: one more moderate and one more extreme party. Some other third party isn't going to fall out of the sky and present a brand new way of doing things that suddenly has substantial clout. Were this split to happen, the moderate party would have a very difficult time convincing moderate-leaning supporters of the surviving party (the one that didn't split) to convert to what is likely the same party just now missing it's more extreme branch. They'd split the ticket and the surviving party would sweep power for a period of time while the moderate party starts to regain the trust of moderate-leaning voters.

Whether or not you vote has no connection of the legitimacy of your right to discourse. That said, unsupported, haphazardly cynical rhetoric isn't exactly contributing to society.

[Achtane]

Mehhh.
I voted for a few and filled out the rest.
I really hope King Buzzo gets on the school board.

[snipelfritz]

Mehhh.
I voted for a few and filled out the rest.
I really hope King Buzzo gets on the school board.

lol, I almost put myself as a write-in for county treasurer.

[Psyre]

I really appreciate your response Greyscales.

I understand there are more than 2 parties on the ballots, but the media which is suppose to be the "watch dog" fails to educate the general population that there are options. Unfortunately we do not live in a society where the majority of people will educate their selves, and it honestly does render the other parties useless. I hate the idea of "throwing away your vote" because honestly I think there would be nothing more exciting and nothing more needed right now than a party winning and only pulling say 34% of the popular vote. How else can we as Americans express our distaste with how things are going. If we want change, but fail to create it, what is the purpose.


Also, to comment on one part of your post Greyscales, I think creating a gridlock is exactly what we need. A period of panic with no centralized leader, only the congressional bodies. If anything could rattle Americas concrete governmental ideologies I think that would be it.


Also I completely agree that that voting for State government is extremely important, and I do believe more power should be given back to the individual states, that being said, I am sad to admit that I did not vote for anything in regards to Michigan, I did not find it fair to people in Michigan for me to vote because I did not think ahead of time to research properly and I do not plan on residing in Michigan again. Had I thought of this sooner maybe I would have switched my residence over to Arkansas, but even then I do not plan on being here longer than a year. I am pretty embarrassed to admit that, but I did not find it fair to participate in a state election I am not a part of.

[jrmy]

I voted, and at risk of sounding jingoistic, was damned proud to do so.

Although I was pissed that I missed the Pro Tone & Fuzzhugger "take a picture of yourself in front of your polling place and get a pedal for $100" promotion until after I'd voted.

[wsas3]

Greyscales- Our voting method is not a majority rules election.
People in general talking about there being/needing more options- More options doesn't do anything, every single states elector will be "pledged" to vote in the college for either Romney or Obama, so options isn't even the beginning of the problem.

[greyscales]

I don't want to make this too heavy, but I think we can all have this discussion without too much arguing since it isn't really about issues. Most of this is a lot of personal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt and feel free to pick out whatever you don't feel is accurate.

Psyre, I think part of the problem is you are making some assumptions that probably aren't that accurate, not to be insulting. The media isn't a watch dog. It's a self-serving industry meant to generate revenue. Assuming it isn't, while optimistic, is somewhat flawed. Educating voters would be a waste of money for them. Shareholders in media corporations aren't going to allow that. You might get people at an individual level willing to do it, but a corporation wouldn't unless it was specifically created to (tv, radio, internet, and print aren't). It sucks that it works like that, but it does. This is the bitter reality.

As far as gridlock goes, Congress is already in gridlock. We have a divided Congress: the Senate is majority Democrat, the House is majority Republican. It makes it very difficult to get laws passed in that state (which is part of the reason why presidents have a hard time fulfilling their promises). The president actually has little power in passing laws in reality. Sure, they can veto a law, but a strong Congress can get by that. I think you would find replacing career Congressmen would go a lot further than a third party president.

To bring this back to the third party idea, perhaps Americans should start trying to get third parties into Congressional seats. That's actually quite feasible. It takes a very small portion of the population to do so, and over time it can add up. Look at what the Tea Party did: they had an ideological agenda, got people to back it financially and electorally, and they got their (economically) more conservative candidates in office. They were only a lobbying group and had a huge effect on the 2010 election. That's the kind of thing voters can do easily.

wsas3, I know it is a plurality rules system. But since there are 2 parties, you end up with a majority in essence.

[Mike]

One reason to vote for a third party candidate in a presidential election that many people aren't aware is matching funds. You know that little checkbox on your tax form that asks if you want to donate $3 to the presidential elections? That funds it.

Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate, received matching funds in this election due in part to Bob Barr's performance in 2008.

A vote for the libertarian candidate is not thrown away in the sense that you might help that party in 2016.

Mike